Paul Zeitz

Dr. Paul Zeitz is Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. He majored in history at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992, specializing in ergodic theory. One of his greatest interests is mathematical problem solving. He won the USA Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) and was a member of the first American team to participate in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 1974. Since 1985, he has composed and edited problems for several national math contests, including the USAMO. He has helped train several American IMO teams, most notably the 1994 Dream Team, which, for the first time in history achieved a perfect score. He founded the San Francisco Bay Area Math Meet in 1994 and cofounded the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad in 1999. These and other experiences led him to write The Art and Craft of Problem Solving (1999; second edition, 2007). He was honored in March 2002 with the Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics by the Northern California Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), and in January 2003, he received the MAA's national teaching award, the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award.