He was born in Melbourne, Australia and lived there until he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his doctorate.^[1] He received his PhD from MIT in 1970, working under Hartley Rogers, Jr^[2] who had himself worked under Alonzo Church.^[3] From 1970 until 2001 he taught at Monash University back in Australia and in 2002 began teaching in San Francisco.^[1]

In 2005, Stillwell was the recipient of the Mathematical Association of America's prestigious Chauvenet Prize for his article “The Story of the 120-Cell,”^[4] Notices of the AMS, January 2001, pp. 17–24.^[5] In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[6]

BooksEdit

Stillwell is the author of many textbooks and other books on mathematics including:

• Classical Topology and Combinatorial Group Theory, 1980, ISBN 0-387-97970-0
• Mathematics and Its History, 1989, 3rd edition 2010, ISBN 0-387-95336-1
• Geometry of Surfaces, 1992, ISBN 0-387-97743-0
• Elements of Algebra: Geometry, Numbers, Equations, 1994,^[7] ISBN 0-387-94290-4
• Numbers and Geometry, 1998, ISBN 0-387-98289-2
• Elements of Number Theory, 2003, ISBN 0-387-95587-9
• The Four Pillars of Geometry, 2005,^[8] ISBN 0-387-25530-3
• Yearning for the Impossible: The Surprising Truths of Mathematics, 2006, ISBN 1-56881-254-X^[9]
• Naive Lie Theory, 2008, ISBN 0-387-98289-2
• Roads to Infinity, 2010, ISBN 978-1-56881-466-7
• The Real Numbers: An Introduction to Set Theory and Analysis, 2013, ISBN 978-3319015767
• Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel, 2016, ISBN 978-0691171685
• Reverse Mathematics: Proofs from the Inside Out, 2018, ISBN 978-0691177175
• A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers, 2019, ISBN 978-1108610124
• The Story of Proof: Logic and the History of Mathematics, 2022, ISBN 978-0691234366

Selected articlesEdit

• Stillwell, John (1982). "The word problem and the isomorphism problem for groups". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. (N.S.). 6 (1): 33–56. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1982-14963-1. MR 0634433.
• Stillwell, John (1983). "Efficient computations in groups and simplicial complexes". Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. 276 (2): 715–727. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-1983-0688973-8. MR 0688973.
• Lenard, Andrew; Stillwell, John (1983). "An algorithmically unsolvable problem in analysis". Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 88 (1): 129–130. doi:10.1090/s0002-9939-1983-0691292-2. MR 0691292.
• Stillwell, John (1987). "The occurrence problem for mapping class groups". Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 101 (3): 411–416. doi:10.1090/s0002-9939-1987-0908639-5. MR 0908639.
• Stillwell, John (January 2001). "The Story of the 120-Cell" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 48 (1): 17–25.
• Stillwell, John (2012). "Poincaré and the early history of 3-manifolds" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. (N.S.). 49 (4): 555–576. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-2012-01385-x.