Keith Devlin

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British mathematician (born 1947)

title: "Keith Devlin" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1947-births", "living-people", "alumni-of-king's-college-london", "alumni-of-the-university-of-bristol", "set-theorists", "stanford-university-staff", "20th-century-british-mathematicians", "21st-century-british-mathematicians", "mathematicians-from-kingston-upon-hull", "fellows-of-the-american-mathematical-society", "mathematics-popularizers"] description: "British mathematician (born 1947)" topic_path: "science/mathematics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Devlin" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary British mathematician (born 1947) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

Field	Value
name	Keith J. Devlin
image	Keith Devlin WSF 2011.jpg
caption	Keith Devlin in 2011
birth_date
birth_place	Hull, England
nationality	British and American
fields	Mathematics
workplaces
alma_mater
thesis_title	Some Aspects of Constructibility
thesis_url	https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.456343
thesis_year	1971
doctoral_advisor	Frederick Rowbottom
known_for	Regular speaker, writer and advocate for improving public understanding of math
website
spouse	Janet Carey (m. 1967)
::

Keith J. Devlin (born 16 March 1947) is a British and American mathematician and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is known for his work in mathematical cognition, information theory, and the public communication of mathematics. Devlin has authored more than 30 books and numerous scholarly articles. He was a regular commentator on National Public Radio (NPR) as “the Math Guy” and is the co-founder and President of BrainQuake, an educational technology company that develops mathematics learning games.

Education

He was born and grew up in England, in Kingston upon Hull, where he attended Greatfield High School. Devlin earned a BSc (special) in mathematics at King's College London in 1968, and a mathematics PhD in logic at the University of Bristol in 1971 under the supervision of Frederick Rowbottom.

Career

Later he got a position as a scientific assistant in mathematics at the University of Oslo, Norway, from August till December 1972. In 1974 he became a scientific assistant in mathematics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. In fall 1976 he was an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto, Canada. From spring 1977 through 1987 he served as a lecturer, then reader, in mathematics at the University of Lancaster, England. From 1987 to 1989 he was a visiting associate professor of mathematics and philosophy at Stanford University in California. From 1989 to 1993 he was the Carter Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Colby College in Maine. From 1993 to 2000 he was Dean of Science at St. Mary's College of California.

From 2001 until he retired he was a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language, an independent research center at Stanford University. He was also co-founder and executive director of Stanford University's former Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute (2006), and a co-founder of Stanford Media X university-industry research partnership program. He was a commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday, where he was known as "The Math Guy."

His current research is mainly focused on the use of different media to teach mathematics to different audiences. He is also co-founder and president of the company BrainQuake, which creates mathematics learning video games, which he set up in 2011. Other topics of his research are the theory of information, models of reasoning, applications of mathematical techniques in the study of communication, and mathematical cognition.

As of 2023 he had authored 33 books and over 80 research or expository articles. Most of his books are aimed at a general audience.

Awards

Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award, 2001
In 2007 he received Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.
2004 International Pythagoras Prize in Mathematics, in the category Best Expository Text in the Mathematical Sciences for the Italian translation of The Millennium Problems
Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012

Bibliography

;Articles

[First proof of Jensen's covering theorem; Keith J. Devlin is credited as Keith I. Devlin in the paper.]

;Books

with coauthor Gary Lorden
{{cite book |title=Introduction to Mathematical Thinking|year=2012|publisher=Keith Devlin (18 July 2012) |isbn=978-0615653631}}

References

[https://lccn.loc.gov/n79082239 Author information from Library of Congress authorities]. Lccn.loc.gov
"British Library Item details".
link. (30 December 2013 .)
(2024-04-10). "Keith Devlin".
[http://profkeithdevlin.com/DevlinVita.pdf Curriculum vitae], Profkeithdevlin.com, accessed 3 February 2014.
"BrainQuake".
(2019-07-09). "BrainQuake".
{{mathgenealogy
"Devlin, Keith 1947- {{!}} Encyclopedia.com".
[https://www.stanford.edu/~kdevlin/MathGuy.html Archive of The Math Guy series from NPR's Weekend Edition] accessed 9 November 2007
"Brainquake".
(7 July 2014). "Keith Devlin".
(2011). "Sagan Prize Recipients". wonderfest.org.
"Honors & Awards".
[https://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved 10 November 2012.

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