Jorge Nuno Silva Explained

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).

He is a teacher trainer for Associação Ludus and the Portuguese Mathematical Society.

Mathematics promotion

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 and he often appears on Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) as an expert on games.^{[12] [13]}

Books

• 1998: Berkeley Problems in Mathematics (with Paulo Ney de Souza), Springer (1998),
• 1998: Some Notes on Game Bounds, Dissertation.com (1998),
• 1998: Some Notes on the Theory of Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Functions of the Unit Disc, Dissertation.com (1998),
• 2013: Mathematical Games, Abstract Games (with Joao Neto), Dover Puzzle Books (19201398),
• 2013: O Livro de Jogos de Afonso X, o Sábio, Apenas 2013, ISBN 978-989-618-421-6

• 2017: Proceedings of the Board Game Studies Colloquium (2017), ^[14]
• 2022: As Loterias Lisbonenses (1834) de Francisco António Marques Giraldes Barba, 2a edição, Ludus 2022, ISBN 979-883-7880902
• 2022: Tratado da Prática de Aritmética (1519) de Gaspar Nicolas. FCG 2022 (with Pedro Freitas), ISBN 978-972-31-1646-5

Papers

• "Konane has infinite nim-dimension" (with Carlos Pereira dos Santos) Integers: Electronic Journal of Combinatorial Number Theory, January 2008^[15]
• "On Mathematical Games", The British Journal for the History of Mathematics: Bulletin 26 (2), (2011)
• "Composition Operators on a Local Dirichlet Space", (with D Sarason), J. Ana. Math. 87, 433-450
• Breakfast with John Horton Conway, Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society 57, September 2005, pp. 32–34.
• Mathematical games in Europe around the year 1000, Gerbertus, Vol I, 2010, pp. 205–217
• Martin Gardner (1914-2010), Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society 79, March 2011, pp. 21–23
• Mathematics of Soccer, Recreational Mathematics Magazine 1, 2014 (with Alda Carvalho and Carlos Santos) http://rmm.ludus-opuscula.org/Home/ArticleDetails/92
• 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)
• Foundations of Digital Archæoludology, 31 May 2019 (with Cameron Browne et al.) http://arxiv.org/abs/1905.13516
• 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)
• The Loterias Lisbonenses of Francisco Giraldes Barba, in British Journal for the History of Mathematics, 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2023.2258331 (with Pedro Freitas)

External links

• Jorge Nuno Silva's home page

• Jorge Nuno Silva on Google Scholar
  • Jorge Nuno Silva at Amazon

Notes and References

1. https://ciencias.ulisboa.pt/en/perfil/jnsilva Jorge Nuno Monteiro De Oliveira E Silva
2. https://sciendo.com/it/journal/rmm Managing Editor: Jorge Nuno Silva
3. https://sciendo.com/journal/BGS Managing Editor: Jorge Nuno Silva
4. https://www.cienciavitae.pt/421F-25FE-0ECB Curriculum vitae: Jorge Nuno Silva
5. Some Notes on Game Bounds dissertation.com
6. https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=32509 Jorge-Nuno Oliveira Silva
7. Book: Berkeley Problems in Mathematics . 2004 . Springer . Problem Books in Mathematics.
8. http://ludicum.org/ Ludus Association
9. https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/157083.mathematik-ist-pures-spielen.html Mathematics is pure play
10. https://www.dn.pt/portugal/um-dia-sera-inventado-um-bom-jogo-para-ensinar-matematica-e-o-mundo-vai-mudar-8997842.html "Um dia será inventado um bom jogo para ensinar Matemática e o mundo vai mudar"
11. https://circomatematico.pt/%20Mathematical%20Circus%20Show Mathematical Circus Show
12. https://www.rtp.pt/programa/tv/p40436/e8 Guided tour of the church of São Roque, host of Social Games of the Portuguese State
13. https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/jogos-matematicos/ Mathematical Games: Debate on Science with Jorge Nuno Silva et. al.
14. https://www.todostuslibros.com/autor/jorge-nuno-silva 7 títulos para "Jorge Nuno Silva"
15. https://celebratio.org/Berlekamp_ER/article/843/ Elwyn Berlekamp Autobiography