The George Pólya Award is presented annually by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for articles of expository excellence that have been published in the College Mathematics Journal. The award was established in 1976, and up to two awards of $1,000 each are given each year.An exception was made in 1983 when three awards were given. The award is named after Hungarian mathematician George Pólya.

Recipients Recipients of the George Pólya Award have included:

YearRecipientArticle 2025 Tova Brown and Brody Johnson Pull-Back Cars: Vehicles for the Instruction of Differential Equations 2025 Jason Snyder A Modern Spin on Archimedes' Quadrature of the Parabola 2024 Damiano Fulghesu, James A. Sellers and Courtney K. Taylor Infinite Families of Infinite Series with Integer Sums 2024 William Dunham Bryn Mawr College Matriculation Exams from a Century Ago 2023 William Q. Erickson Haste Makes Waste: An Optimization Problem 2023 Johnner Barrett Unlawful Calculations: A Look into Lie’s Notebook 2022 Joseph Previte and Michelle Previte The Beautiful Chaotic Dynamics of iz 2022 Adrian Rice and Ezra Brown Why Hamilton Couldn’t Multiply Triples 2021 Holly Middleton-Spencer and James Christian On the Nth Roots of -1 and Complex Basin Boundaries: Fractals from Newton-Raphson 2021 Adam Hammett Euler's Limit and Stirling's Estimate 2020 Adam Glesser, Matt Rathbun, Isabel M. Serrano, Bogdan Suceavă Eclectic Illuminism: Applications of Affine Geometry 2020 Christopher J. Catone Bringing Calculus into Discrete Math via the Discrete Derivative 2019 Stanley R. Huddy and Michael A. Jones The Calculus Behind Generic Drug Equivalence 2019 Peter McGrath Newton’s Shell Theorem via Archimedes’ Hat Box and Single Variable Calculus 2018 Ben Blum-Smith and Samuel Coskey Fundamental Theorem on Symmetric Polynomials: History’s First Whiff of Galois Theory 2018 Stephen Kaczkowski Mathematical Models for Global Mean Sea Level Rise 2017 Viktor Blåsjö How to Find the Logarithm of Any Number Using Nothing But a Piece of String 2017 Travis Kowalski The Sine of a Single Degree 2016 Gordon Hamilton, Kiran S. Kedlaya, and Henri Picciotto Square-Sum Pair Partitions 2016 Hassan Boualem and Robert Brouzet To Be (a Circle) or Not To Be? 2015 Michael Brilleslyper and Lisbeth Schaubroeck Locating Unimodular Roots 2015 David Joyner The Man Who Found God's Number 2014 Adam E. Parker Who Solved the Bernoulli Differential Equation and How Did They Do It? 2014 Christiane Rousseau How Inge Lehmann Discovered the Inner Core of the Earth 2013 Jacob Siehler The Finite Lamplighter Groups: A Guided Tour 2013 David Applegate, Marc LeBrun, and Neil J. A. Sloane Carryless Arithmetic Mod 10 2012 Leslie A. Cheteyan, Stewart Hengveld, and Michael A. Jones Chutes and Ladders for the Impatient 2012 T. S. Michael Guards, Galleries, Fortresses, and the Octoplex 2011 Jonathan K. Hodge, Emily Marshall, and Geoff Patterson Gerrymandering and Convexity 2011 John Martin The Helen of Geometry 2010 Andrew Barker Evolutionary Stability in the Traveler's Dilemma 2010 Curtis Feist and Ramin Naimi Topology Explains Why Automobile Sunshades Fold Oddly 2009 Lawrence Brenton Remainder Wheels and Group Theory 2009 Greg N. Frederickson Designing a Table Both Swinging and Stable 2008 Roland Minton and Timothy J. Pennings Do Dogs Know Bifurcations? 2008 Andrew J. Simoson Pursuit Curves for the Man in the Moone 2007 Richard Jerrard, Joel Schneider, Ralph Smallberg, and John Wetzel Straw in a Box 2007 Allen Schwenk Distortion of Average Class Size: The Lake Wobegon Effect 2006 Ezra Brown Phoebe Floats! 2006 James Sandefur A Geometric Series from Tennis 2005 Brian Hopkins and Robin J. Wilson The Truth About Königsberg 2005 Stephen M. Walk Mind Your ∃s and ∀s 2004 Greg N. Frederickson A New Wrinkle on an Old Folding Problem 2003 David L. Finn Can a Bicycle Create a Unicycle Track? 2003 Dan Kalman An Underdetermined Linear System for GPS 2002 Tim Freeman Conformality, the Exponential Function, and World Map Projections 2001 Ezra Brown Three Fermat Trails to Elliptic Curves 2001 Chip Ross and Jody Sorensen Will the Real Bifurcation Diagram Please Stand up! 2000 Martin Gardner The Asymmetric Propeller 2000 Ezra Brown Square Roots From 1; 24, 51, 10 to Dan Shanks 1999 David Bleecker and Larry Wallen The World’s Biggest Taco 1999 Aaron Klebanoff and John Rickert Studying the Cantor Dust at the Edge of Feigenbaum Diagrams 1998 Aimee Johnson and Kathleen Madden Putting the Pieces Together: Understanding Robinson’s Nonperiodic Tilings 1998 Kevin Kirby Of Memories, Neurons, and Rank-One Corrections 1997 Leon Harkleroad How Mathematicians Know What Computers Can’t Do 1997 Chris Christensen and Shreeram S. Abhyankar Newton’s Method for Resolving Affected Equations 1996 James G. Simmonds A New Look at an Old Function, eiθ 1996 John Ewing Can We See the Mandelbrot Set? 1995 Paulo Ribenboim Prime Number Records 1995 Anthony P. Ferzola Euler and Differentials 1994 Dan Kalman Six Ways to Sum a Series 1994 Charles Groetsch Inverse Problems and Torricelli’s Law 1993 Dana N. Mackenzie Triquetras and Porisms 1993 Les Lange and James W. Miller A Random Ladder Game: Permutations, Eigenvalues, and Convergence of Markov Chains 1992 Howard Eves Two Surprising Theorems on Cavalieri Congruence 1992 William Dunham Euler and the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra 1991 Mark F. Schilling The Longest Run of Heads 1991 William B. Gearhart and Harris S. Shultz The Function sin(x)/x 1990 Israel Kleiner Evolution of the Function Concept: A Brief Survey 1990 D. Neidinger Automatic Differentiation & APL 1989 Edward Rozema Why Should We Pivot in Gaussian Elimination? 1989 Beverly L. Brechner and John C. Mayer Antoine’s Necklace or How to Keep a Necklace from Falling Apart 1988 V. Frederick Rickey Isaac Newton: Man, Myth, and Mathematics 1988 Dennis Luciano and Gordon Prichett Cryptology: From Caesar Ciphers to Public-Key Cryptosystems 1987 Constance Reid The Autobiography of Julia Robinson 1987 Irl Bivens What a Tangent Line Is When It Isn’t a Limit 1986 Philip J. Davis What Do I Know? A Study of Mathematical Self-Awareness 1985 Anthony Barcellos The Fractal Geometry of Mandelbrot 1985 Kay Dundas To Build a Better Box 1984 Ruma Falk and Maya Bar-Hillel Probabilistic Dependence between Events 1984 Richard J. Trudeau How Big is a Point? 1983 Warren Page and Vedula N. Murty Nearness Relations among Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion: Part 1 1983 Douglas R. Hofstadter Analogies and Metaphors to Explain Gödel’s Theorem 1983 Paul R. Halmos The Thrills of Abstraction 1982 Peter Renz Mathematical Proof: What It Is and What It Ought to Be 1982 John Mitchem On the History and Solution of the Four-Color Map Problem 1981 Ennis D. McCune, Robert G. Dean and William D. Clark Calculators to Motivate Infinite Composition of Functions 1981 Don Chakerian Circles and Spheres 1980 Hugh Ouellette and Gordon Bennett The Discovery of a Generalization: An Example in Problem Solving 1980 Robert Nelson Pictures, Probability and Paradox 1979 Richard Plagge Fractions without Quotients: Arithmetic of Repeating Decimals 1979 Richard L. Francis A Note on Angle Construction 1978 Frieda Zames Surface Area and the Cylinder Area Paradox 1978 Allen H. Holmes, Walter J. Sanders and John W. LeDuc Statistical Inference for the General Education Student-It Can Be Done 1977 Julian Weissglass Small Groups: An Alternative to the Lecture Method 1977 Anneli Lax Linear Algebra, a Potent Tool

See also List of mathematics awards

References