Jorge Nuno Silva (born 1956) is a Portuguese mathematician who taught at the University of Lisbon, starting in 1995 and retiring in 2023.[1] His interests encompass the pedagogy of mathematics, history of mathematics, history of board games, mathematical games, and recreational mathematics. He is the chief editor for Recreational Mathematics Magazine[2] and Board Game Studies Journal.[3]
Education
In 1974, Silva completed his secondary education at the National Lyceum of Viana do Castelo. Subsequently, in 1976/77, he enrolled at the University of Lisbon School of Medicine. In 1983, he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Pure Mathematics from the University of Lisbon Faculty of Sciences (FCUL).[4] In 1991 he obtained a Master of Arts degree at UC Berkeley, writing Some Notes on Game Bounds under the direction of Elwyn Berlekamp.[5] In 1994 he got a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley with the dissertation, "Some Notes on the Theory of Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Functions on the Unit Disc" under doctoral advisor Donald Erik Sarason.[6]
Teaching
From 1995 until his retirement in April 2023 he was a professor at the University of Lisbon.[4] First at the Department of Mathematics (1995-2006), and then at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (2006-2023).
In 1998 Silva wrote Berkley Problems of Mathematics, a compendium of problems which is widely used by PhD candidates as a reference.[7] He is president of the Ludus Association (Associação Ludus), an organization for popularizing the culture and history of mathematics.[8] He is a member of Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia (CIUHCT)
Silva has been involved in efforts to popularize mathematics around the world. In a 2009 interview he stated his guiding philosophy: "Mathematics is, by its very nature, the pure joy of thinking, and the same goes for board games. There is a lack of challenging activities in our Western culture. Games can close this gap; there are many interrelationships between mathematics, history, and culture."[9] In an interview with Diário de Notícias he said, "One day a great game will be invented to teach Mathematics and the world will change."[10]
Silva is the co-founder of the Circo Matemático which, since its founding in 2011, has toured more than a dozen countries on four continents promoting the popularization of mathematics.[11]
In Portugal he has had an enormous effect on mathematics in public education[12] and he often appears on Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) as an expert on games.[13][14]
A very mathematical card trick, Recreational Mathematics Magazine 2, September 2014, pp. 41–52 (with Carlos Santos and Pedro Duarte)
Nimbers in Partizan Games, Games of No Chance 4, R.J. Nowakowski (Ed.), MSRI Publications Series, Vol 63, 215–223, 2015 (with Carlos Santos)
Allégorie de la Géométrie. A Mathematical Interpretation, Recreational Mathematics Magazine. Volume 3, Issue 5, Pages 33–45, ISSN (Online) 2182-1976, DOI: 10.1515/rmm-2016-0003, April 2016 (with Alda Carvalho and Carlos Pereira dos Santos)
Measuring Drama in Goose-like Games, Board Game Studies Journal. Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages 101–119, ISSN (Online) 2183-3311, DOI: 10.1515/bgs-2016-0005, September 2016 (with João Pedro Neto)
The geometer dog who did not know calculus, in The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 48(5), November 2017 (with Alda Carvalho and Carlos Pereira dos Santos)
Measuring Drama in Snakes & Ladders, in Game & Puzzle Design, vol. 3, no. 2, 2017, pp. 56–63. (with João Pedro Neto)
Mathematical Treasure: Gaspar Nicolas’s Tratado da Prática D’arismetyca, Convergence, MAA, July 2021
Playing Symmetries. Portuguese Sidewalks, in Symmetry: Art and Science | 12th SIS-Symmetry Congress [Special Issue]. Viana, V., Nagy, D., Xavier, J., Neiva, A., Ginoulhiac, M., Mateus, L. & Varela, P. (Eds.). Symmetry: Art and Science. Porto: International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry, 2022. (with Carvalho, A., Santos, C., Teixeira, T.)
The Recreational Problems of Tratado de Prática Darysmetica by Gaspar Nicolas, 1519, Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics (the CSHPM 2021 volume) 2023, pp. 47–56. (with Pedro Freitas)
