When the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) put on its first exhibition for the public in 1992, few in the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area believed that anyone would pay to come to a theater to learn about math. But William Thurston, who spearheaded the outreach effort as director of MSRI at the time, proved the naysayers wrong. “The venue sold out completely,” recalls David Eisenbud, professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and current director of MSRI. “They were scalping tickets outside to meet demand.”
Claire Huskins enjoys Danica McKellar’s Kiss My Math in MSRI's library.
MSRI’s public educational activities have only increased in ambition since that night. As part of an ongoing commitment to expanding public understanding and appreciation of mathematics, MSRI’s past events in San Francisco have included appearances by playwright Tom Stoppard and comedians Robin Williams and Steve Martin. Now, a three-year outreach grant from the Simons Foundation has allowed the organization to expand its efforts onto the national and online stages, including the first-ever National Mathematics Festival, held in Washington, D.C., in April 2015; a prize for children’s literature related to mathematics; support for Numberphile, the most watched informal math channel on YouTube; and support for the documentary Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture.
The three-day National Mathematics Festival, produced in partnership with the Institute for Advanced Study, featured discussions of educational policy at the state and federal levels, an event devoted to public and private support of basic research and a day-long public festival, involving interactive math displays, math buskers, and art installations at many of the Smithsonian museums.
The Mathical Prize: Books for Kids from Tots to Teens was created because “we wanted to do for math what Harry Potter did for reading,” Eisenbud says. The prizes will not be awarded to textbooks or explicitly pedagogical materials, but rather to engaging and playful narrative works. The first winners of the prize were announced at the festival.
MSRI also provides support for the Numberphile YouTube series, created and hosted by former BBC reporter Brady Haran. The series surpassed 1 million subscribers and 100 million views in 2014; the popular episode “Mile of Pi,” in which Haran printed out the first million digits of pi on a single sheet of paper, was filmed to celebrate this accomplishment. With MSRI’s backing, Haran has been able to interview ‘heavy hitters’ such as John Conway, Barry Mazur and Donald Knuth. “I am just a layman exploring mathematics — and MSRI keeps me in tune with what is happening at the mathematical cutting edge,” Haran says.
Eisenbud views MSRI’s expanded outreach efforts as a necessary part of improving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the United States. “Math is much bigger than numbers,” he asserts. “It’s about structure and pattern. We want to counter the tendency of people to say, ‘I always hated math in school,’ and feel instead that it’s an interesting and necessary part of the modern world and its culture.”
MSRI aims to advance fundamental knowledge in mathematics and the mathematical sciences, develop human capital for the growth and use of such knowledge, and cultivate awareness and appreciation of the beauty, power, and importance of mathematical ideas.
