AMR Newsletter
April 2026
Reviews
A new expository article by Richard Evan Schwartz explains how to build Boy’s surface, a famous- and quite beautiful- immersion of the projective plane into R3. |
New! AMR Prize for the "Paper of the Future"
We are delighted to announce a $10,000 “Paper of the Future” Prize to stimulate innovation in research-level mathematical communication. For centuries, mathematics has been communicated in a fundamentally linear medium: the written page. From manuscript to journal article to PDF, the format has remained static and sequential. Yet mathematics itself is nonlinear, dynamic, and structurally rich. Proofs form dependency graphs; geometric objects live in high dimensions; differential equations evolve; algebraic structures act; parameter spaces deform continuously.
Today, technical barriers to dynamic and interactive exposition have largely fallen. Web-based graphics, browser computation, simulation engines, and AI-assisted coding now allow mathematicians — not just professional software engineers — to build interactive, multidimensional representations of mathematical ideas. The constraint is no longer technical capacity, but imagination. The Association for Mathematical Research is well-positioned to encourage responsible experimentation in this domain. Our Reviews platform already supports arbitrary browser-based interactive expositions, and the AMR has demonstrated leadership in rethinking aspects of scholarly communication. PurposeThe aim of this initiative is not popularization, nor production polish, nor short-form video content. The purpose is to encourage serious experimentation in how mathematicians communicate with one another. We seek submissions that demonstrate communicative capabilities fundamentally unavailable in a static PDF — for example:
Each submission must explicitly articulate what essential communicative function it provides that a linear paper cannot. The initiative is intended as an experiment in format innovation, not as a replacement for traditional scholarship. See here for more details on the prize, including information on submission. Submissions are due September 1, 2026. |
2026 AMR Prize in the Mathematics of Artificial Intelligence
The AMR will be awarding the third annual Prize in the Mathematics of Artificial Intelligence in 2026. It will be awarded for research performed in the last 10 years in mathematics relevant to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, or in AI research relevant to mathematics. The 2024 Prize was awarded to Ohad Shamir of the Weizmann Institute, and the 2025 Prize was awarded to Arthur Jacot of the Courant Institute. The prize carries an award of $50,000. We are soliciting nominations, which should include a brief note describing the qualifications of the nominee as well as the research for which the prize could be awarded. Nomination letters for the 2026 Prize should be sent to aiprize@amathr.org, and should be received by September 30, 2026 to assure full consideration.
2026 Fred R. Cohen Prize
The AMR will be awarding the second Fred R. Cohen Prize in 2026, honoring the work of Fred R. Cohen. The award is granted every other year; the 2024 prize was awarded to Søren Galatius of the University of Copenhagen. The prize recognizes outstanding contributions in the area of algebraic topology from the last ten years. The selection process is based entirely on the quality of the research produced by the prize candidate. Candidates from anywhere in the world will be equally considered. The prize is funded by a permanent endowment and includes a cash award of approximately $5,000. Nomination letters for the 2026 prize should be sent to 2026cohenprize@gmail.com, and should be received by September 30, 2026 to assure full consideration.
Updates on Journals
We encourage you to submit your high-quality papers to the AMR’s Diamond Open Access journals.
Editor-in-Chief: Sergei Tabachnikov, Pennsylvania State University
The goal of the Arnold Mathematical Journal is to present mathematics in a manner that is understandable and interesting to mathematicians, not confined to experts in specialized research fields. The latest issue is here.
Editor-in-Chief: Lev Reyzin, University of Illinois Chicago
MDLI publishes research articles at the intersection of any branch of mathematics with data science, machine learning, or artificial intelligence. MDLI is now accepting submissions.
Editors-in-Chief: Martin Helmer, Swansea University and Vidit Nanda, Oxford University
ACTG publishes research papers at the intersection of computational mathematics and geometric/topological methods, with a particular focus on algorithmic and applied aspects of algebraic geometry and algebraic topology. ACTG is now accepting submissions.
The AMR at the ICM
Who’s Going?
With the International Congress of Mathematicians approaching, we’d love to get a sense of which AMR members are planning to attend.
- If you are already registered and will be there, please let us know — we’re hoping to coordinate informal meetups and highlight the AMR’s presence.
- If you are interested in attending but have not yet registered, we’d especially like to hear from you. We may be able to secure a small number of complimentary registrations for AMR members.
If either applies, please email us.
AMR President Alex Kontorovich will be giving a Special Plenary Lecture during the congress, and the AMR is planning to have a booth in the exhibits area. We encourage everyone to stop by to say hello, to find out more about the AMR, and to browse our books and journals.
Alex is the winner of multiple awards, including most recently being selected to speak at the 2026 ICM. From the ICM website: “Alex Kontorovich is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University. He received a BA from Princeton and PhD from Columbia, and previously taught at Brown, Stony Brook, and Yale. Kontorovich’s research interests are in number theory, geometry, and dynamics, as well as formalized mathematics and applications to AI. He is the recipient of the American Mathematical Society’s Levi Conant Prize, a Sloan Research Fellowship, several Simons Foundation Fellowships, and a von Neumann Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Kontorovich is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Mathematical Research, the Editorial Board of the Annals of Formalized Mathematics, and the Scientific Advisory Boards of Quanta Magazine and the Lean Focused Research Organization. Kontorovich is also active in outreach efforts, including serving as the 2020-2021 Distinguished Visiting Professor for the Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics in NYC, and founding the Rutgers branch of the renowned Math Corps summer day camp. He has collaborated with YouTube channels Veritasium, 3blue1brown, and others on videos that have collectively been viewed over 100 million times.”
The AMR Receives Major Donations
We’re very pleased to announce major donations to the AMR from the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and from Michael Brin. These funds will be used to sustain and grow the AMR’s diamond open access journals. The AMR believes that diamond open access journals are the future of mathematical research publishing and we are extremely grateful for the support for this project.
If you wish to donate to the AMR, please contact any of the AMR board members for information on how to do so, or go to our donation page. The AMR is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and donations are tax deductible as allowable by law.
Best wishes for a productive spring and summer from the AMR Board. | |
Colin ADAMS, Williams College | |
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