18 January 2013 • Friday
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
Sanjoy Mahajan obtained his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1998, after an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Oxford and in physics from Stanford. Due to his wonderful teachers, he became interested in improving science teaching, an interest he has followed at the University of Cambridge, as a faculty member in the physics department;
at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, as one of the founding faculty and the first curriculum director; at MIT, as Associate Director of the Teaching and Learning Laboratory; and at Olin College of Engineering, where he is Visiting Associate Professor of Applied Science and Engineering. In March 2010, MIT Press published his textbook Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving, available in print and online under a Creative Commons Noncommercial ShareAlike license.