Jessica Sklar


Jessica Katherine Sklar is a mathematician interested in abstract algebra, recreational mathematics, mathematics and art, and mathematics and popular culture. She is a professor of mathematics at Pacific Lutheran University, and former head of the mathematics department at Pacific Lutheran.

Education and career

As a high school student, Sklar studied poetry at the Interlochen Arts Academy. She did her undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College, where her mother Elizabeth S. had earned a degree in English and her father Lawrence Sklar had taught philosophy. Jessica completed a double major in English and mathematics in 1995.
Next, Sklar moved to the University of Oregon for graduate study in mathematics, earning a master's degree in 1997 and completing her Ph.D. there in 2001. Her dissertation, Binomial Rings and Algebras, was supervised by Frank Wylie Anderson.
She has been a faculty member in the mathematics department at Pacific Lutheran since 2001.

Selected Publications

Sklar was a winner of the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award of the Mathematical Association of America in 2011 for her paper with Gene Abrams, The Graph Menagerie: Abstract Algebra and the Mad Veterinarian.
The paper provides a general solution to a class of lattice reduction puzzles exemplified by the following one:
She was the July 2012 Author of the Month at Ada's Technical Books in , Washgington.