The
Mathematical Association of America
(
MAA) is a professional society that focuses on
mathematics accessible at the
undergraduate level. Members include
university,
college, and
high school teachers; graduate and
undergraduate students; pure and applied
mathematicians;
computer scientists;
statisticians; and many others in academia,
government, business, and industry.
The MAA
was founded in 1915 and is headquartered at 1529 18th
Street
, Northwest in the Dupont
Circle
neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
. It may be best known as a publisher of
technical and popular mathematics journals and books, including the
American Mathematical Monthly, established in 1894 by
Benjamin Finkel, the most widely-read
mathematics journal in the world according to records on
JSTOR.
Meetings
The MAA sponsors the annual summer
MathFest
and cosponsors with the
American Mathematical Society
the
Joint Mathematics
Meeting, held in early January of each year. On occasion the
Society
for Industrial and Applied Mathematics joins in these meetings.
Twenty-nine regional sections also hold regular meetings.
Inclusiveness
The MAA has for a long time followed a strict policy of
inclusiveness and non-discrimination.
In previous periods it was subject to the same problems of
discrimination that were widespread across the United States.
One
notorious incident at a south-eastern sectional meeting in Nashville
in 1951 has been documented by the mathematician
and equal rights activist Lee Lorch, who
recently received the highest honour of the MAA for distinguished
services to mathematics. The citation delivered at the 2007
MAA awards presentation, where Lorch received a standing ovation,
recorded that:
- "Lee Lorch, the chair of the mathematics department at Fisk
University, and three Black colleagues, Evelyn Boyd (now
Granville), Walter Brown, and H. M. Holloway came
to the meeting and were able to attend the scientific
sessions. However, the organizer for the closing banquet
refused to honor the reservations of these four
mathematicians. (Letters in Science, August 10, 1951,
pp. 161-162 spell out the details). Lorch and his
colleagues wrote to the governing bodies of the AMS and MAA seeking
bylaws against discrimination. Bylaws were not changed,
but non-discriminatory policies were established and have been
strictly observed since then."
The Association elected its first woman president,
Dorothy Lewis Bernstein, at its 1979
meeting.
Since 1992, the Association also has at least one annual joint
meeting with a mathematical association from another nation, most
often the
Sociedad
Matematica Mexicana.
Publications
The association publishes multiple journals:
The Association publishes an online resource, Mathematical Sciences
Digital Library (Math DL). The service launched in 2001 with the
online-only
Journal of Online Mathematics and its
Applications (JOMA) and a set of classroom tools,
Digital
Classroom Resources. These were followed in 2004 by
Convergence, an online-only history magazine, and in 2005
by
MAA Reviews, an online book review service, and
Classroom Capsules and Notes, a set of classroom
notes.
Competitions
The MAA sponsors numerous competitions for students, including the
Putnam exam for undergraduate students,
and the
American
Mathematics Competitions (AMC) for middle- and high-school
students. The AMC program also includes the
American
Invitational Mathematics Examination and the
United States of
America Mathematics Olympiad. Through this program, outstanding
students are identified and invited to participate in the
Mathematical Olympiad Program.
Ultimately, six high school students are chosen to represent the
U.S. at the
International Mathematics
Olympiad.
Sections
The MAA is composed of the following twenty-nine regional
sections.
Allegheny Mountain, EPADEL, Florida, Illinois, Indiana,
Intermountain, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana/Mississippi,
MD-DC-VA, Metro New York, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska - SE SD, New
Jersey, North Central, Northeastern, Northern CA - NV-HI, Ohio,
Oklahoma-Arkansas, Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Seaway,
Southeastern, Southern CA - NV, Southwestern, Texas,
Wisconsin
Awards & Prizes
The MAA distributes many prizes, including the
Chauvenet Prize and the Carl B.
Allendoerfer, Trevor Evans, Lester R. Ford, George Polya, Merten
Hasse, and Henry L. Alder awards.
Memberships
The MAA is one of four partners in the
Joint Policy Board for
Mathematics (JPBM, http://www.jpbm.org/index.html), and
participates in the
Conference Board
of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS, http://www.cbmsweb.org/),
an umbrella organization of sixteen professional societies.
Historical accounts
A detailed history of the first fifty years of the MAA appears in .
A report on activities prior to
World War
II appears in . Further details of its history can be found in
. In addition numerous regional sections of the MAA have published
accounts of their local history.
See also
Notes
- JSTOR usage
statistics
- Moskol, Ann. 1987. "Dorothy Lewis Bernstein" Women of
Mathematics. eds. Louise S. Grinstein and Paul J. Campbell.
Greenwood Press.
References
- , talk by Lee Lorch at AMS Special Session, Cincinnati, January
1994. Reprinted in .
- (includes citation for Lee Lorch)
External links
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