Stanley Wagon is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

mathematician, a professor emeritus of mathematics at

Macalester College Macalester College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate institution with an enrollment of 2,142 students in the fall of 2023. The college ha ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

. He is the author of multiple books on

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

, geometry, and computational mathematics, and is also known for his

snow sculpture Snow sculpture, snow carving or snow art is a sculpture form comparable to sand sculpture or ice sculpture in that most of it is now practiced outdoors often in full view of spectators, thus giving it kinship to performance art. The materials an ...

Biography

Wagon was born in Montreal, to Sam and Diana (Idlovitch) Wagon. His sister Lila (Wagon) Hope-Simpson died in 2021. Wagon did his undergraduate studies at

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

in Montreal, graduating in 1971. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from

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 ...

, under the supervision of

James Earl Baumgartner James Earl Baumgartner (March 23, 1943 – December 28, 2011) was an American mathematician who worked in set theory, mathematical logic and foundations, and topology. Baumgartner was born in Wichita, Kansas, began his undergraduate study at the ...

. He married mathematician Joan Hutchinson, and the two of them shared a single faculty position at

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...

and again at Macalester, where they moved in 1990.

Books

*'' The Banach–Tarski Paradox'' (Cambridge University Press, 1985) *''Old and New Unsolved Problems in Plane Geometry and Number Theory'' (with

Victor Klee Victor LaRue Klee, Jr. (September 18, 1925 – August 17, 2007) was a mathematician specialising in convex sets, functional analysis, analysis of algorithms, optimization, and combinatorics. He spent almost his entire career at the University of ...

, Mathematical Association of America, 1991)
''Mathematica® in Action: Problem Solving Through Visualization and Computation''
(W.H. Freeman, 1991; 2nd ed., Springer, 1999; 3rd ed., Springer, 2010) *''Animating Calculus'' (with E. Packel, TELOS, 1996) *''Which Way Did the Bicycle Go?'' (with J. D. E. Konhauser and D. Velleman, Mathematical Association of America, 1996) *''VisualDSolve: Visualizing Differential Equations with Mathematica'' (with Dan Schwalbe, TELOS, 1997; 2nd ed., with Schwalbe and Antonin Slavik, Wolfram Research, 2009). *''A Course in Computational Number Theory'' (with

David Bressoud David Marius Bressoud (born March 27, 1950, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) is an American mathematician who works in number theory, combinatorics, and special functions. As of 2019 he is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College, ...

, Springer, 2000) *''The Mathematical Explorer'' (Wolfram Research, Inc., 2001) *''The SIAM 100-Digit Challenge: A Study in High-Accuracy Numerical Computing'' (with Laurie, Bornemann, and Waldvogel, SIAM, 2004)

Other activities

Wagon is also known for riding a

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered transport, human-powered or motorized bicycle, motor-assisted, bicycle pedal, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two bicycle wheel, wheels attached to a ...

with

square wheel A square wheel is a wheel that, instead of being circle, circular, has the shape of a square (geometry), square. While literal square wheels exist, a more common use is as an idiom meaning stereotypically bad or naive engineering (see reinventing ...

s, for his mathematical

s, and for having given the name to the

420 420 may refer to: Science and technology * 420 (number), in mathematics * 420 Bertholda, a main-belt asteroid * 4:2:0, a chroma subsampling layout Cannabis culture * 420 (cannabis culture), informal reference to cannabis use and celebrations ...

Arch, a natural stone arch in southern Utah.

Awards and honors

Wagon won the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America for his 1988 paper, "Fourteen Proofs of a Result about Tiling a Rectangle". Wagon and his co-authors Ellen Gethner and Brian Wick won the

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is an annual award given by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate. The Chauvenet Prize was the ...

for mathematical exposition in 2002 for their 1998 paper, "A Stroll through the Gaussian Primes".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wagon, Stan Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Canadian mathematicians McGill University alumni Dartmouth College alumni Smith College faculty Macalester College faculty