Dr. John Rickert specializes in number theory and Diophantine approximations. A committed educator to students of all ages, Dr. Rickert recently received the Samuel Greitzer Distinguished Coach Award for his longtime mentorship of Indiana's high school team in the American Regions Math League competitions. He coordinates Rose-Hulman's High School Mathematics Competition, organizes the Alfred R. Schmidt Freshman Mathematics Competition, serves as chief judge for local and state MATHCOUNTS competitions, and tutors some of the world's most accomplished high school science and math students at the Research Science Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Rickert also is known for his love of baseball. He is a member of the Society of American Baseball Research and provided mathematical calculations to help architects design the retractable roof for the Seattle Mariners' Safeco field. Check out his personal web page.

Academic Degrees

  • PhD, University of Michigan, 1990
  • BS, Astronomy-Physics, University of Wisconsin, 1984
  • BS, Mathematics, University of Wisconsin, 1984

Awards & Honors

  • George Polya Award, Mathematical Association of America
  • Samuel L. Greitzer Distinguished Coach Award, American Regions Math League, 2016

Publications & Presentations

  • Rickert, J., Grantham, J., Jarnicki, W., and Wagon, S., “Repeatedly Appending Any Digit to Generate Composite Numbers," American Mathematical Monthly, 121, 416-421, 2014
  • Rickert, J., Langley, T. M., and Grimaldi, R. P., “The Jacobsthal Subgraph of the Hypercube," Graph Theory Notes of New York, LVIII, New York Academy of Sciences, 27-35, 2010
  • Klebanoff, A. and Rickert, J., “Studying the Cantor Dust at the Edge of the Feigenbaum Diagrams,” The College Mathematics Journal, 29, 189-198, 1998
  •  “Simultaneous Rational Approximations and Related Diophantine Equations," Math. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., 113, 461-471, 1993

Research Interests

  • Simultaneous linear approximations
  • Norm form diophantine equations
  • Partition functions

Teaching Interests

  • Number theory
  • Diophantine approximations
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