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Zalman Usiskin

American mathematician

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 20, 2025
Entity authorityQ8065537
Source-derived summary

Zalman Usiskin is an educator best known as the Director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project.

He was born to Nathan and Esther Usiskin.

A faculty member since 1969, he also has taught junior and senior high-school mathematics and has authored and co-authored many textbooks, including a six-volume series used as part of the University School Mathematics Project secondary curriculum. In recognition of his work, he has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Usiskin's doctoral dissertation in mathematical education at the University of Michigan involved the field testing of his book, Geometry: A Transformation Approach, which was written with Arthur Coxford. This book has greatly influenced the way geometry is taught in many American high schools, according to the NCTM citation. With the founding of UCSMP in 1983, he became Director of the secondary component and has been the project's overall Director since 1987. The University School Mathematics Project has grown to become the nation's largest university-based curriculum project for kindergarten through 12th-grade mathematics, with several million students using its elementary and secondary textbooks and other materials.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Zalman Usiskin” as american mathematician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Zalman, Usiskin and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 1983, 1987—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Zalman, Usiskin and American providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Zalman Usiskin”, the useful work is to connect “american mathematician” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8065537. VIAF identifies the subject as 65386410. The Library of Congress control number is n83155393. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1983 and 1987.

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This entry incorporates text from Zalman Usiskin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.