Stan Wagon

Stanley "Stan" Wagon ( born 1951 in Montreal ) is a Canadian- American mathematician. He is a professor at Macalester College in Minnesota.

Wagon acquired in 1971 his bachelor's degree in mathematics at McGill University and in 1975 from Dartmouth College with James Baumgartner PhD ( Decompositions of saturated ideals ). He taught at Smith College and from 1990 at Macalester College.

He dealt with geometry, number theory, experimental mathematics and computer visualization in mathematics and wrote a series of nonfiction books about mathematics. He built mathematical snow sculptures and a bicycle with square wheels.

His wife Joan Hutchinson ( b. 1945 ) is also math professor at Macalester College, dealing with graph theory and won the Carl Allendoerfer Prize.

In 1988, he won the Lester Randolph Ford Award and the 2002 Chauvenet Prize with Ellen Gethner and Brian Wick for A stroll through the Gaussian primes. He also published a lot in the Mathematical Intelligencer, for example, 1985/86 a series on numerical evidence for various assumptions.

His hobbies include long-distance running, cross-country skiing and climbing.

Writings

• The Banach - Tarski Paradox, Cambridge University Press, 1985
• With Victor Klee: Old and New Unsolved Problems in Plane Geometry and Number Theory, Mathematical Association of America, 1991 German translation: Old and new unsolved problems in number theory and geometry of the plane, Birkhauser 1997