# George Pólya Award

The George Pólya Award is presented annually by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for articles of expository excellence that have been published in The College Mathematics Journal. The award was established in 1976, and up to two awards of $1,000 each are given each year. The award is named after Hungarian mathematician George Pólya.

## Recipients

Recipients of the George Pólya Award have included:
| Year | Recipient | Article |
| 2023 | William Q. Erickson | Haste Makes Waste: An Optimization Problem |
| 2023 | Johnner Barrett | Unlawful Calculations: A Look into Lie’s Notebook |
| 2022 | Joseph Previte and Michelle Previte | The Beautiful Chaotic Dynamics of iz |
| 2022 | Adrian Rice and Ezra Brown | Why Hamilton Couldn’t Multiply Triples |
| 2021 | Holly Middleton-Spencer and James Christian | On the Nth Roots of -1 and Complex Basin Boundaries: Fractals from Newton-Raphson |
| 2021 | Adam Hammett | Euler's Limit and Stirling's Estimate |
| 2020 | Adam Glesser, Matt Rathbun, Isabel M. Serrano, Bogdan Suceavă | Eclectic Illuminism: Applications of Affine Geometry |
| 2020 | Christopher J. Catone | Bringing Calculus into Discrete Math via the Discrete Derivative |
| 2019 | Stanley R. Huddy and Michael A. Jones | The Calculus Behind Generic Drug Equivalence |
| 2019 | Peter McGrath | Newton’s Shell Theorem via Archimedes’ Hat Box and Single Variable Calculus |
| 2018 | Ben Blum-Smith and Samuel Coskey | Fundamental Theorem on Symmetric Polynomials: History’s First Whiff of Galois Theory |
| 2018 | Stephen Kaczkowski | Mathematical Models for Global Mean Sea Level Rise |
| 2017 | Viktor Blåsjö | How to Find the Logarithm of Any Number Using Nothing But a Piece of String |
| 2017 | Travis Kowalski | The Sine of a Single Degree |
| 2016 | Gordon Hamilton, Kiran S. Kedlaya, and Henri Picciotto | Square-Sum Pair Partitions |
| 2016 | Hassan Boualem and Robert Brouzet | To Be (a Circle) or Not To Be? |
| 2015 | Michael Brilleslyper and Lisbeth Schaubroeck | Locating Unimodular Roots |
| 2015 | David Joyner | The Man Who Found God's Number |
| 2014 | Adam E. Parker | Who Solved the Bernoulli Differential Equation and How Did They Do It? |
| 2014 | Christiane Rousseau | How Inge Lehmann Discovered the Inner Core of the Earth |
| 2013 | Jacob Siehler | The Finite Lamplighter Groups: A Guided Tour |
| 2013 | David Applegate, Marc LeBrun, and Neil J. A. Sloane | Carryless Arithmetic Mod 10 |
| 2012 | Leslie A. Cheteyan, Stewart Hengveld, and Michael A. Jones | Chutes and Ladders for the Impatient |
| 2012 | T. S. Michael | Guards, Galleries, Fortresses, and the Octoplex |
| 2011 | Jonathan K. Hodge, Emily Marshall, and Geoff Patterson | Gerrymandering and Convexity |
| 2011 | John Martin | The Helen of Geometry |
| 2010 | Andrew Barker | Evolutionary Stability in the Traveler's Dilemma |
| 2010 | Curtis Feist and Ramin Naimi | Topology Explains Why Automobile Sunshades Fold Oddly |
| 2009 | Lawrence Brenton | Remainder Wheels and Group Theory |
| 2009 | Greg N. Frederickson | Designing a Table Both Swinging and Stable |
| 2008 | Roland Minton and Timothy J. Pennings | Do Dogs Know Bifurcations? |
| 2008 | Andrew J. Simoson | Pursuit Curves for the Man in the Moone |
| 2007 | Richard Jerrard, Joel Schneider, Ralph Smallberg, and John Wetzel | Straw in a Box |
| 2007 | Allen Schwenk | Distortion of Average Class Size: The Lake Wobegon Effect |
| 2006 | Ezra Brown | Phoebe Floats! |
| 2006 | James Sandefur | A Geometric Series from Tennis |
| 2005 | Brian Hopkins and Robin J. Wilson | The Truth About Königsberg |
| 2005 | Stephen M. Walk | Mind Your ∃s and ∀s |
| 2004 | Greg N. Frederickson | A New Wrinkle on an Old Folding Problem |
| 2003 | David L. Finn | Can a Bicycle Create a Unicycle Track? |
| 2003 | Dan Kalman | An Underdetermined Linear System for GPS |
| 2002 | Tim Freeman | Conformality, the Exponential Function, and World Map Projections |
| 2001 | Ezra Brown | Three Fermat Trails to Elliptic Curves |
| 2001 | Chip Ross and Jody Sorensen | Will the Real Bifurcation Diagram Please Stand up! |
| 2000 | Martin Gardner | The Asymmetric Propeller |
| 2000 | Ezra Brown | Square Roots From 1; 24, 51, 10 to Dan Shanks |
| 1999 | David Bleecker and Larry Wallen | The World’s Biggest Taco |
| 1999 | Aaron Klebanoff and John Rickert | Studying the Cantor Dust at the Edge of Feigenbaum Diagrams |
| 1998 | Aimee Johnson and Kathleen Madden | Putting the Pieces Together: Understanding Robinson’s Nonperiodic Tilings |
| 1998 | Kevin Kirby | Of Memories, Neurons, and Rank-One Corrections |
| 1997 | Leon Harkleroad | How Mathematicians Know What Computers Can’t Do |
| 1997 | Chris Christensen and Shreeram S. Abhyankar | Newton’s Method for Resolving Affected Equations |
| 1996 | James G. Simmonds | A New Look at an Old Function, eiθ |
| 1996 | John Ewing | Can We See the Mandelbrot Set? |
| 1995 | Paulo Ribenboim | Prime Number Records |
| 1995 | Anthony P. Ferzola | Euler and Differentials |
| 1994 | Dan Kalman | Six Ways to Sum a Series |
| 1994 | Charles Groetsch | Inverse Problems and Torricelli’s Law |
| 1993 | Dana N. Mackenzie | Triquetras and Porisms |
| 1993 | Les Lange and James W. Miller | A Random Ladder Game: Permutations, Eigenvalues, and Convergence of Markov Chains |
| 1992 | Howard Eves | Two Surprising Theorems on Cavalieri Congruence |
| 1992 | William Dunham | Euler and the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra |
| 1991 | Mark F. Schilling | The Longest Run of Heads |
| 1991 | William B. Gearhart and Harris S. Shultz | The Function sin(x)/x |
| 1990 | Israel Kleiner | Evolution of the Function Concept: A Brief Survey |
| 1990 | D. Neidinger | Automatic Differentiation & APL |
| 1989 | Edward Rozema | Why Should We Pivot in Gaussian Elimination? |
| 1989 | Beverly L. Brechner and John C. Mayer | Antoine’s Necklace or How to Keep a Necklace from Falling Apart |
| 1988 | V. Frederick Rickey | Isaac Newton: Man, Myth, and Mathematics |
| 1988 | Dennis Luciano and Gordon Prichett | Cryptology: From Caesar Ciphers to Public-Key Cryptosystems |
| 1987 | Constance Reid | The Autobiography of Julia Robinson |
| 1987 | Irl Bivens | What a Tangent Line Is When It Isn’t a Limit |
| 1986 | Philip J. Davis | What Do I Know? A Study of Mathematical Self-Awareness |
| 1985 | Anthony Barcellos | The Fractal Geometry of Mandelbrot |
| 1985 | Kay Dundas | To Build a Better Box |
| 1984 | Ruma Falk and Maya Bar-Hillel | Probabilistic Dependence between Events |
| 1984 | Richard J. Trudeau | How Big is a Point? |
| 1983 | Warren Page and Vedula N. Murty | Nearness Relations among Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion: Part 1 |
| 1983 | Douglas R. Hofstadter | Analogies and Metaphors to Explain Gödel’s Theorem |
| 1983 | Paul R. Halmos | The Thrills of Abstraction |
| 1982 | Peter Renz | Mathematical Proof: What It Is and What It Ought to Be |
| 1982 | John Mitchem | On the History and Solution of the Four-Color Map Problem |
| 1981 | Ennis D. McCune, Robert G. Dean and William D. Clark | Calculators to Motivate Infinite Composition of Functions |
| 1981 | Don Chakerian | Circles and Spheres |
| 1980 | Hugh Ouellette and Gordon Bennett | The Discovery of a Generalization: An Example in Problem Solving |
| 1980 | Robert Nelson | Pictures, Probability and Paradox |
| 1979 | Richard Plagge | Fractions without Quotients: Arithmetic of Repeating Decimals |
| 1979 | Richard L. Francis | A Note on Angle Construction |
| 1978 | Frieda Zames | Surface Area and the Cylinder Area Paradox |
| 1978 | Allen H. Holmes, Walter J. Sanders and John W. LeDuc | Statistical Inference for the General Education Student-It Can Be Done |
| 1977 | Julian Weissglass | Small Groups: An Alternative to the Lecture Method |
| 1977 | Anneli Lax | Linear Algebra, a Potent Tool |