Student Writing Contest Past Winners

First Place: Accessibility, Artistry, and Mathematics
A Visual Proof of Heron’s Result, by Jenna Slusser (California State University, Monterey Bay)

First Place: A Mind, a Machine, and a Game in Between (about Claude Shannon) by Mithra Karamchedu (Harvey Mudd College)

Second Place: Theories on the Origins of the Sexagesimal System by Y. Shane Wang (University of Toronto)

Honorable Mention: Sangaku: The Mathematical Art of the Edo Period by David Forson (University of Missouri-KC)

Honorable Mention: Deconstructing Descartes: An Analysis of the Mathematical Influences on Descartes’ Philosophy by David Freeman (Lee University)

First Place: Nicole Oresme and the Revival of Medieval Mathematics by Adin Tinsley (Stony Brook University)

First Place: The Assumptive Attitudes of Western Scholars Regarding the Contributions of Mathematics from India: Assessing yukti-s from the Yuktibhāṣā of Jyeṣṭhadeva by Rye Ledford (University of Missouri — Kansas City)

Second Place: Estimations of Pi: The Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics, The Gregory-Leibniz Series, and the Eurocentrism of Math History by Sarah Sanfranski (University of Redlands)

First Place: The Suan shu shu and the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art: A Comparison, Megan Ferguson (University of the Redlands)

First Place: Did Archimedes Do Calculus? by Jeff Powers (Grand Rapids Community College)

First Place: Achieving Philosophical Perfection: Omar Khayyam’s Successful Replacement of Euclid’s Parallel Postulate, by Amanda Nethington (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

First Place: Race to Refraction: The Repeated Discovery of Snell’s Law, by Callie Lane (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Second Place: The Reality of the Complex: The Discovery and Development of
Imaginary Numbers, by Christen Peters (Lee University)

Second Place: François Viète Uses Geometry to Solve Three Problems, by Rachel Talmadge (University of Missouri- Kansas City)

First Place: To Infinity and Beyond: A Historical Journey on Contemplating the Infinite by Amanda Akin (Lee University)

First Place: Traditionalism: 1894 to 1925 by Johann Gaebler (Harvard University)

First Place: Huygens and The Value of all Chances in Games of Fortune by Nathan Otten (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

First Place: A Latent Element of Alice’s Agency in Wonderland: Conservative Victorian Mathematics by Brittany Anne Carlson (Salt Lake Community College)

First Place: The Evolution of the Circle Method in Additive Prime Number Theory by William Cole (Lee University)

Second Place: Can Fichte’s Philosophy Handle Category Theory and Topology? by Brandon Allen (Winona State University)

Second Place: Overcoming Obstacles: The Lives of Sophie Germain and Sonya Kovalevskaya, by Anne Alicia Kelton (Lee University)

First Place: Bernard Bolzano, a Genius Unnoticed in His Time by Samuel Patterson (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

First Place: Examining Disproved Mathematical Ideas through the Lens of Philosophy by Briana Yankie (Lee University)

Second Place: Abstraction and Rigor: The Development of the Concept of Area by Benjamin Brett Buckner (Lee University)

Second Place: The Major Mathematical Contributors to Population Genetics and their Significance by Amelia Lovelace (Hood College)

First Place: Casting Light on the Statistical Life of Florence Nightingale by Jenna Miller (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Second Place: Gabriel Cramer: Over 260 Years of Crushing the Unknowns by Paul Ayers (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Second Place: Probability to 1750 by Mary Ruff (Colorado State University – Pueblo)

First Place: Paradigms and Mathematics: A Creative Perspective by Matthew Shives (Hood College)

First Place: Indivisibles and the Cycloid in the Early 17th Century by Jesse Hamer (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Second Place: On the Foundations of X-Ray Computed Tomography in Medicine: A Fundamental Review of the ‘Radon transform’ and a Tribute to Johann Radon by Kevin L. Wininger (Otterbein University)

First Place: Kepler’s Development of Mathematical Astronomy by Paul Stahl (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Second Place: Mathematics and Mathematical Thought in the Quadrivium of Isidore of Seville by Sarah Costrell (Brandeis University)

Second Place: Thomas Harriot’s Artis Analyticae Praxis and the Roots of Modern Algebra by Rick Hill (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

First Place: The Heart is a Dust Board:  Abu’l Wafa Al-Buzjani, Dissection, Construction, and the Dialog Between Art and Mathematics in Medieval Islamic Culture by Jennifer Nielsen (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

First Place: The Use of Similarity in Old Babylonian Mathematics by Palmer Rampell (Phillips Academy and Harvard University)

First Place: The Fermat Problem by Stefanie Streck (Pacific Lutheran University)
“The Fermat Problem”

First Place: The Mathematical Optics of Sir William Hamilton: Conical Refraction and Quaternions by Nathan McLaughlin (University of Montana)

Second Place: Regression Analysis: A Powerful Tool and Riveting Drama by Tim Chalberg (Pacific Lutheran University)

Honorable Mention: A Brief History of Quaternions and the Theory of Holomorphic Functions of Quaternionic Variables by Amy Buchmann (Chapman University)

First Place: Constructivism: A Realistic Approach to Math? by Mame Maloney (University of Chicago)

Second Place: Thinking Inside the Box: Geometric Interpretation of Quadratic Problems in BM 13901 by Woody Burchett (Georgetown College)

Second Place: Jean Le Rond D’Alembert: Biography of a Mathematician, Philosophe, and a Man of Letters by Cole McGee (Colorado State University – Pueblo)

Honorable Mention: Pathological Functions in the 18th and 19th Centuries by Mame Maloney (University of Chicago)

First Place: The Libra Astronomica and its Mathematics by Rory Plante

First Place: Lucas’s theorem: A Great Theorem by Douglas Smith (Miami University, Ohio)

First Place: The Sagacity of Circles: A History of the Isoperimetric Problem by Jennifer Wiegert

First Place: Maria Gaetana Agnesi: Female Mathematician and Brilliant Expositor of the 18^th Century by Samantha Reynolds (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

First Place: Eratosthenes and the Mystery of the Stades by Newlyn Walkup (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Second Place: Rigor in Analysis: From Newton to Cauchy by James Collingwood (Drake University)

First Place: It Appears That Four Colors Suffice: A Historical Overview of the Four-Color Theorem by Mark Walters

First Place: An Emanji Temple Tablet by Heath Yates (University of Missouri – Kansas City)