[Sci-tech-public] Siegal Prize Winner

[David Mindell]

Hello all,

 

I am pleased to announce that the this year's Siegal Prize goes to HASTS
graduate student Alma Steingart for her paper ""In Practice and On Paper:
Embodiment and Materiality in the Twentieth-Century Convergence of
Mathematics and Origami."

The Benjamin Siegel Prize of $2500 is offered to the MIT student submitting
the best written work on issues in science, technology, and society. The
prize is open to undergraduate and graduate students from any school or
department of the Institute. The prize was established in 1990 by family and
friends of the late Benjamin Siegel (S.B. 1938, Ph.D.)

In the words of the prize committee: Alma's paper, "explores the
'conversion' of the ancient Japanese art of origami into mathematical
expressions. The paper uses this connection as a place to begin telling a
material history of mathematics,
not as disembodied cogitation, but as a practice that begins and ends with
mathematicians engaged with and shaping the material world. The author
beseeches us not to take origami lightly, to see it not merely as 'art
form,' but as a concrete example of a larger constellation of material
practices. Here is a fine story and intricately rendered argument. It is
told with great artistry, forcefully and insistently grabbing the reader
with its refined prose from start to finish."

 

Please join me in congratulating Alma on this well-deserved honor. Also
thanks to Clapperton Mavhunga and Hanna Shell for serving on the prize
committee. 

 

Well done, Alma!



d

 

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