The Dan Shanks Award is made to undergraduate students studying computational number theory and related areas.
The award was established in 2012 by Jim Owings, a former professor in the Mathematics Department, in memory of Dan Shanks, a well-known computational number theorist who worked at the University after retiring from the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and the National Bureau of Standards.
About Dan Shanks
Shanks was born on January 17, 1917, in Chicago, Illinois. He is not related to the English mathematician William Shanks, who was also known for his computation of π. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1937, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1954. Prior to obtaining his PhD, Shanks worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, first as a physicist and then as a mathematician. During this period he wrote his PhD thesis, which he completed in 1949, despite having never taken any graduate math courses.
After earning his PhD in mathematics, Shanks continued working at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and the Naval Ship Research and Development Center at David Taylor Model Basin, where he stayed until 1976. He spent one year at the National Bureau of Standards before moving to the University of Maryland as an adjunct professor. He remained in Maryland for the rest of his life. Shanks died on September 6, 1996.
Award Recipients
- 2025 Anurag Kumar
- 2024 Uma Tikekar
- 2023 Samuel Lidz
- 2022 David Fang
- 2021 Caroline Nunn
- 2020 Steven Jin
- 2019 Pratik Rathore
- 2018 William Kunkel
- 2017 Tanay Vijay Wakhare
- 2016 Katherine Cordwell
- 2015 Daniel Kaufman and Logan Crew
- 2014 David J. Bekkerman
- 2013 Srinivas Vasudevan