(San Francisco)—Paul Zeitz, chairman of the math department at the University of San Francisco, has won the most prestigious math teaching award in the United States. The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has awarded him the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.

The award is given to those “who have been widely recognized as extraordinarily successful and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions.”

“Paul first burst onto the national scene as a 15-year old Wunderkind,” said Tristan Needham, Associate Dean of Sciences at the University of San Francisco. “He won the USA Mathematical Olympiad and appeared on the Today show. As an adult, he coached the US ‘dream team’ which achieved an unprecedented perfect score at the International Olympiad in Hong Kong in 1994.”

Zeitz has gone on to found math competitions across the Bay Area, including The Bay Area Math Meet and The Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad. Zeitz has also coached Bay Area teams for national contests and helped high school teachers learn to maintain math clubs in their schools.

The MAA called Zeitz “charismatic” and applauded his passion for teaching and solving mathematical problems. This passion and expertise has been disseminated to a wide audience through his book, The Art and Craft of Problem Solving, of which Dr. Robert Pisani has written, “Sometimes a piece of music or a painting or a film just leaves me speechless. Sometimes it is a book, and this is such a book.”

Zeitz shares the award with Judith Grabiner of Pitzer College and Ranjan Roy of Beloit College. They will be presented with the award at the MAA's national meeting in Baltimore in January.

For more information, contact Monica Leifer, USF assistant director of media relations
at (415) 422-2697 or email leifer@usfca.edu.