Keith Devlin


Keith J. Devlin is a British mathematician and popular science writer. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States. He has dual British-American citizenship.

Biography

He was born and grew up in England, in Kingston upon Hull. There he attended a local primary school followed by Greatfield High School in Hull. In the last school year he was appointed Head Boy.
Devlin earned a BSc in Mathematics at King's College London in 1968, and a PhD in Mathematics 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 University of Oslo, Norway from August till December 1972. In 1974 he became a Scientific Assistant in Mathematics at University of Heidelberg, Germany. In 1976 he was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at University of Toronto, Canada.
From 1977 till 1987 he served as a Lecturer in Mathematics at University of Lancaster, England.
From 2001 till 2009 he was a Consulting Professor, Stanford University: Department of Mathematics at Stanford, California.
He is co-founder and Executive Director of Stanford University's Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute, a co-founder of Stanford Media X university-industry research partnership program, and a Senior Researcher in the Center for the Study of Language and Information. He is a commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday, where he is known as "The Math Guy."
His research is mainly focused on the use of different media to teach mathematics to different audiences. He is also co-founder and President the company BrainQuake, which creates mathematics learning video games. He set it up in 2011.
Other topics of his research are as following: theory of information, models of reasoning, applications of mathematical techniques in the study of communication, and mathematical cognition.
By 2012 he has been the author of 34 books and over 80 research articles. Several of his books are aimed at an audience of the general public.

Awards