John Cameron Urschel Jr. (born June 24, 1991) is a Canadian mathematician and former professional

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

guard Guard or guards may refer to: Professional occupations * Bodyguard, who protects an individual from personal assault * Crossing guard, who stops traffic so pedestrians can cross the street * Lifeguard, who rescues people from drowning * Prison gu ...

. He played

college football College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, firs ...

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with ca ...

and was drafted by the

Baltimore Ravens The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The team plays its home g ...

in the fifth round of the

2014 NFL draft The 2014 NFL draft was the 79th annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible football players to the league. The draft, officially the "Player Selection Meeting", was held at Radio City Music Hall in New Y ...

. Urschel played his entire NFL career with Baltimore before announcing his retirement on July 27, 2017, at 26 years old. Urschel has bachelor's and master's degrees (both from Penn State) and a PhD (from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

), all in mathematics. Urschel is also an advanced stats columnist for ''

The Players' Tribune ''The Players' Tribune'' is a new media platform that produces daily sports conversation and publishes first-person stories from professional athletes. The platform was founded by former professional Major League Baseball player Derek Jeter in ...

''. He served a three-year term on the

College Football Playoff The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual single-elimination tournament, knockout invitational tournament to determine a national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, D ...

selection committee which began in the spring of 2020, and is an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics of the

Early life and education

Urschel was born in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

, Canada. His parents
John Urschel Senior
and Venita Parker, were a surgeon and attorney, respectively. He grew up in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

where he graduated from

Canisius High School Canisius High School is a Catholic, private college-preparatory school for young men run by the USA Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus in Buffalo, New York, United States, just north of the Delaware Avenue Historic District. Founded in ...

in 2009.Lenzi, Rachel. "Canisius High graduate John Urschel joins College Football Playoff selection committee," ''The Buffalo'' (NY) ''News'', Wednesday, January 22, 2020.
Retrieved December 19, 2022. At

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

, Urschel earned both a bachelor's degree in 2012 and a master's 2013 degree in mathematics before earning his PhD in mathematics from the

in 2021. While at Penn State, he was awarded the William V. Campbell Trophy, known as the "academic Heisman".

Professional football career

Urschel was selected by the

in the fifth round of the 2014 NFL draft. He played in 11 games, starting three, for the Ravens in 2014. He appeared in 16 games, starting seven, for the team in 2015. He played in 13 games, starting three, his final season in 2016. On July 27, 2017, Urschel announced his retirement from the NFL after three seasons. ''

The Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news. Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publi ...

'' reported that the ''

JAMA ''JAMA'' (''The Journal of the American Medical Association'') is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of b ...

'' study on the prevalence of

chronic traumatic encephalopathy Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated trauma to the head. The encephalopathy symptoms can include behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking. The disease often gets wor ...

(CTE) in deceased players was a factor in Urschel's decision. Officially he stated, "This TEwas actually a serious, serious concern of mine. Yes, I am retiring; I did retire. But at the same time, I love the NFL. I love football. I wouldn't trade my experiences for the world. I do believe that football is a great game. I didn't want to be fodder for anti-football establishments." His retirement as an active player was not the end of his participation in the sport. He was appointed to the

selection committee on January 22, 2020, serving a three-year term which began in the spring of that year.

Mathematics career

While doing his master's at Penn State, Urschel was involved in teaching vector calculus, trigonometry and analytic geometry, and introduction to econometrics. In 2014, Urschel was named Arthur Ashe, Jr. Sports Scholar by ''Diverse: Issues In Higher Education''. In 2015, Urschel co-authored a paper in the ''Journal of Computational Mathematics'' titled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians". It includes "a cascadic

multigrid In numerical analysis, a multigrid method (MG method) is an algorithm for solving differential equations using a hierarchy of discretizations. They are an example of a class of techniques called multiresolution methods, very useful in problems e ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph

Laplacian In mathematics, the Laplace operator or Laplacian is a differential operator given by the divergence of the gradient of a scalar function on Euclidean space. It is usually denoted by the symbols \nabla\cdot\nabla, \nabla^2 (where \nabla is th ...

, namely, the

eigenvector In linear algebra, an eigenvector ( ) or characteristic vector is a vector that has its direction unchanged (or reversed) by a given linear transformation. More precisely, an eigenvector \mathbf v of a linear transformation T is scaled by ...

corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue." Urschel began a Ph.D. in mathematics at

in 2016, focusing on

spectral graph theory In mathematics, spectral graph theory is the study of the properties of a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph in relationship to the characteristic polynomial, eigenvalues, and eigenvectors of matrices associated with the graph, such as its adjacen ...

numerical linear algebra Numerical linear algebra, sometimes called applied linear algebra, is the study of how matrix operations can be used to create computer algorithms which efficiently and accurately provide approximate answers to questions in continuous mathemati ...

, and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

. MIT does not allow Ph.D. students to study part-time; while the Ravens knew that he was taking classes, Urschel admitted after retiring from the team that he did not disclose that he was a full-time graduate student, having taken correspondence classes in between games and practices. On January 4, 2017, Urschel was named to Forbes' " 30 Under 30" list of outstanding young scientists and owns the following blurb: "Urschel has published six peer-reviewed mathematics papers to date and has three more ready for review. He's won academic awards for his math prowess. All this while playing guard for the Baltimore Ravens." Since 2017, Urschel has had an

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

of 4. His PhD thesis on ''Graphs, Principal Minors, and Eigenvalue Problems'' was completed in 2021 under Michel Goemans at MIT. He was a member of the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

. In the Fall of 2023, Urschel joined the faculty of MIT as an assistant professor in the MIT Math department. He is also a Junior Fellow at the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intellect ...

(currently on leave).

Awards and honors

* 2009: Mr. Canisius * 2013: Senior CLASS Award * 2016–2018: Dean of Science Fellowship * 2017: ''Forbes''s "30 Under 30" list in science * 2024: Doctor of Letters, ''

honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

'',

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...

Papers

* Dhruv Rohatgi, John C. Urschel, Jake Wellens. "Regarding Two Conjectures on Clique and Biclique Partitions", Preprint, . * John C. Urschel, "Uniform Error Estimates for the Lanczos Method", Preprint, . * John C. Urschel, Jake Wellens
"Testing k-Planarity Is NP-Complete"
''Information Processing Letters''. * Victor-Emmanuel Brunel, Ankur Moitra, Philippe Rigollet, John C. Urschel. "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Determinantal Point Processes", Preprint, . * John C. Urschel, Ludmil T. Zikatanov. "Discrete Trace Theorems and Energy Minimizing Spring Embeddings of Planar Graphs", ''Linear Algebra and Its Applications'', 2021. * John C. Urschel. "Nodal Decompositions of Graphs", ''Linear Algebra and Its Applications'', Volume 539, 60-71, 2018. * John C. Urschel. "On the Characterization and Uniqueness of Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations", ''SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis'', 55(3), 1525-1547, 2017. * John C. Urschel, Victor-Emmanuel Brunel, Ankur Moitra, Phillipe Rigollet. "Learning Determinantal Point Processes with Moments and Cycles", International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2017. * Victor-Emmanuel Brunel, Ankur Moitra, Philippe Rigollet, John Urschel. "Rates of Estimation for Determinantal Point Processes", Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), 2017. * Xiaozhe Hu, John C. Urschel, Ludmil T. Zikatanov. "On the Approximation of Laplacian Eigenvalues in Graph Disaggregation", ''Linear and Multilinear Algebra'', 65(9): 1805-1822, 2017. * John C. Urschel, Ludmil T. Zikatanov. "On the Maximal Error of Spectral Approximation of Graph Bisection", ''Linear and Multilinear Algebra'', 64(10): 1972-1979, 2016. * John C. Urschel, Xiaozhe Hu, Jinchao Xu, Ludmil Zikatanov. "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians", ''Journal of Computational Mathematics'', Volume 33 No. 2, 2015, 209-226. * John C. Urschel, Ludmil T. Zikatanov. "Spectral Bisection of Graphs and Connectedness", ''Linear Algebra and Its Applications'', Volume 449, 1-16, 2014. * John C. Urschel. "A Space-Time Multigrid Method for the Numerical Valuation of Barrier Options", ''Communications in Mathematical Finance'', Volume 2, no. 3, 1-20, 2013. * John C. Urschel, Joseph R. Galante. "Instabilities in the Sun-Jupiter-Asteroid Three Body Problem", ''Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy'', Volume 115, Issue 3, 233–259, 2013

Chess

Urschel competed in the 2015 Pittsburgh Open, finishing in 12th place (tied for 9th) with 3.0 points (+2-1=2) in the Under 1700 rating section. Urschel competes in competitive

online chess Online chess is chess that is played over the Internet, allowing players to play against each other. This was first done asynchronously through PLATO and email in the 1970s. In 1992, the Internet Chess Server facilitated live online play via t ...

Chess.com Chess.com is an internet chess server and social networking website. One of the largest chess platforms in the world, the site operates on a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others are available via subscription ...

, and he has commentated for Chess.com's BlitzChamps event, a

rapid Rapid(s) or RAPID may refer to: Hydrological features * Rapids, sections of a river with turbulent water flow * Rapid Creek (Iowa River tributary), Iowa, United States * Rapid Creek (South Dakota), United States, namesake of Rapid City Sport ...

tournament for

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The N ...

players.

Personal life

Urschel is married to writer Louisa Thomas, whom he met when she was profiling him for ''

Grantland ''Grantland'' was a sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN. The blog was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons, who remained as editor-in-chief until May 2015. ''Grantland'' was named after famed ...

''. They have two children. Urschel's autobiography, ''Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football'', was co-written by Thomas and published in 2019.

References

External links

*
John Urschel's MIT mathematics website
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Urschel, John 1991 births 21st-century American mathematicians American football offensive guards American people of Canadian descent Baltimore Ravens players Players of American football from Manitoba James E. Sullivan Award recipients Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Penn State Nittany Lions football players Players of American football from Buffalo, New York Sportspeople from Winnipeg William V. Campbell Trophy winners Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Canisius High School alumni Numerical analysts Machine learning researchers