Jason Rosenhouse

Jason Rosenhouse is an American author and professor of mathematics at James Madison University, where he was originally appointed an assistant professor in 2003. He became a full professor in 2014. His research focuses on algebraic graph theory, as well as analytic number theory.^[1] He ran the Evolution Blog at National Geographic's ScienceBlogs,^[2] where he frequently criticized creationism.^[3] He has contributed to the pro-evolution blog The Panda's Thumb,^[4] and has also contributed to HuffPost about topics such as the Higgs boson, in addition to creationism.^[5] In late 2016 he announced that he was abandoning the blogging format.^[6]

Personal life

Jason grew up in New Jersey. While in middle school and high school, he was a prolific chess player, attending both tournaments and chess camp.^[7][8]

Education

Rosenhouse has a bachelor's degree from Brown University in mathematics (1995), and an M.A. (1997) and PhD in mathematics (2000), both from Dartmouth College.^[1] His PhD thesis was entitled "Isoperimetric numbers of certain Cayley graphs associated to PSL (2, [zeta subscript n])".^[9]

Career

In 2000, Rosenhouse accepted a position at Kansas State University's mathematics department, at a time when the state school board was embroiled in a dispute over teaching creationism in schools. The school board's elimination of evolution from science textbooks introduced him to the creationist community, and he says that his time spent with them has convinced him that "the task of reconciling science with faith is far more difficult than is sometimes pretended."^[10]

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed papers

• Cochrane, T.; Pinner, C.; Rosenhouse, J. (2003). "BOUNDS ON EXPONENTIAL SUMS AND THE POLYNOMIAL WARING PROBLEM MOD p". Journal of the London Mathematical Society. 67 (2): 319. doi:10.1112/S0024610702004040. S2CID 15630311.
• Rosenhouse, J. (2002). "Probability, Optimization Theory, and Evolution". Evolution. 56 (8): 1721–1723. doi:10.1554/0014-3820(2002)056[1721:POTAE]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 85618870.
• Lanphier, D.; Rosenhouse, J. (2004). "Cheeger constants of Platonic graphs". Discrete Mathematics. 277 (1–3): 101–113. doi:10.1016/S0012-365X(03)00178-X.

Books

• The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math's Most Contentious Brain Teaser, Oxford University Press^[11]
• Among the Creationists: Dispatches from the Anti-Evolutionist Front Line, Oxford University Press^[12][13]
• Taking Sudoku Seriously: The Math Behind the World's Most Popular Pencil Puzzle, Oxford University Press^[14][15]
• Games for Your Mind: The History and Future of Logic Puzzles , Princeton University Press^[16]