
Every year, usually in the Fall semester, the Mathematics Department awards two senior prizes. The Marston Morse Prize in Mathematics goes to an outstanding senior Mathematics major, and the Senior Prize in Mathematical Sciences goes to an outstanding Mathematical Sciences major. The prize winners get a certificate and a pile of mathematics books (carefully chosen to match that person's interests). Each book is adorned with a special bookplate indicating that it was awarded as part of a senior prize.
The winners of the senior prizes for the class of 2004 are:
The list of winners of the senior prizes is recorded on a special plaque posted in the department. Go take a look!
The senior prize in Mathematics is named for Marston Morse, a Waterville native and Colby graduate from the class of 1914 who went on to get a PhD at Harvard and became one of the leading lights in American mathematics. He taught at Harvard, Cornell, and Brown before becoming (in 1935) a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he studied mathematics until his death in 1977 at age 85. There is a whole subarea of mathematics (Morse Theory) named after him. For more information about Morse, check out his biography in the St. Andrews history of math web site.