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Senior Prizes

Every year, usually in the Spring semester, the Mathematics Department awards two senior prizes. The prize winners get a certificate and a monetary award. The list of winners of the senior prizes is recorded on a special plaque posted in the department. Go take a look!

The two prizes are:

  • The Marston Morse Prize in Mathematics
  • The Thomas R. Berger Prize in the Mathematical Sciences

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.