Jim Propp

In high school, Propp was one of the national winners of the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO), and an alumnus of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics.{{cite web|url=http://www.hcssim.org/alumns.php|title=HCSSiM home page, Information about, by, and for HCSSiM alumns|accessdate=3 May 2008 |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20080509160911/http://hcssim.org/alumns.php |archivedate = 9 May 2008}} Propp obtained his AB in mathematics in 1982 at Harvard. After advanced study at Cambridge, he obtained his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He has held professorships at seven universities, including Harvard, MIT, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Propp is the co-editor of the book Microsurveys in Discrete Probability (1998) and has written more than fifty journal articles on game theory, combinatorics and probability, and recreational mathematics. He lectures extensively and has served on the Mathematical Olympiad Committee of the Mathematical Association of America, which sponsors the USAMO. In the early 90s Propp lived in Boston and later in Arlington, Massachusetts.

In 1996, Propp and David Wilson invented coupling from the past, a method for sampling from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain among Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. Contrary to many MCMC algorithms, coupling from the past gives in principle a perfect sample from the stationary distribution.{{cite journal|author1=Propp, James Gary |author2=Wilson, David Bruce|mr=1611693|year=1996|journal=Random Structures & Algorithms|volume=9|issue=1|title=Exact sampling with coupled Markov chains and applications to statistical mechanics|pages=223–252|doi=10.1002/(SICI)1098-2418(199608/09)9:1/2<223::AID-RSA14>3.0.CO;2-O|citeseerx=10.1.1.27.1022}}{{cite book|author1=Propp, James |author2=Wilson, David|title=Microsurveys in discrete probability (Princeton, NJ, 1997)|publisher=American Mathematical Society|series=DIMACS Ser. Discrete Math. Theoret. Comput. Sci.|mr=1630414|year=1998|volume=41|chapter=Coupling from the past: a user's guide|pages=181–192}} His papers have discussed the use of surcomplex numbers in game theory;{{cite web|url=http://jamespropp.org/surreal/text.ps.gz|title=Surreal vectors and the game of Cutblock|author=Propp, James|date=22 August 1994}} the solution to the counting of alternating sign matrices;{{cite journal|author=Bressoud, David M. |author2=Propp, James|title=How the alternating sign matrix conjecture was solved|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|volume=46|year=1999|pages=637–646|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/199906/fea-bressoud.pdf|author-link=David Bressoud}} and occurrences of Grandi's series as an Euler characteristic of infinite-dimensional real projective space.{{cite arXiv|author=Propp, James|title=Euler measure as generalized cardinality|year=2002|eprint=math.CO/0203289 }}{{cite journal|author=Propp, James|title=Exponentiation and Euler measure|journal=Algebra Universalis|volume=29|issue=4|date=October 2003|pages=459–471|doi=10.1007/s00012-003-1817-1|arxiv=math.CO/0204009|s2cid=14340502}}

Propp was a member of the National Puzzlers' League under the pseudonym Aesop.{{cite journal|journal=The Enigma|publisher=National Puzzlers' League|title=Welcome, New and Returning Members!|volume=111|issue=1070|date=May 1993|page=2|editor=Bagai, Judith E.}} He was recruited for the organisation by colleague Henri Picciotto,{{cite journal|journal=The Enigma|publisher=National Puzzlers' League|title=New Members, Returning Member, Moving Members|volume=108|issue=1040|date=November 1990|page=1|editor=Bagai, Judith E.}} cruciverbalist and co-author of the league's first cryptic crossword collection.{{cite book|url=http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780812936605|title=National Puzzlers' League Cryptic Crosswords|author1=Kosman, Joshua |author2=Picciotto, Henri|date=8 November 2005|accessdate=22 August 2008|publisher=Random House}} Propp is the creator of the "Self-Referential Aptitude Test", a humorous multiple-choice test in which all questions except the last make self-references to their own answers. It was created in the early 1990s for a puzzlers' party.{{cite web|url=http://faculty.uml.edu/jpropp/srat-Q.txt|title=Self-Referential Aptitude Test|author=Propp, Jim}}

Propp is the author of Tuscanini, a 1992 children's book about a musical elephant, illustrated by Ellen Weiss.[https://openlibrary.org/b/OL2025496M/Tuscanini Open Library page for Tuscanini]

In 2015 he was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to combinatorics and probability, and for mentoring and exposition."{{citation|url=https://www.ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/new-fellows|title=2016 Class of the Fellows of the AMS|publisher=American Mathematical Society|accessdate=16 November 2015}}.

He is married to research psychologist Alexandra (Sandi) Gubin. They have a son Adam and a daughter Eliana.[http://faculty.uml.edu/jpropp/ Propp's page at UMass Lowell]

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• [http://jamespropp.org Propp's website]
• {{MathGenealogy |id=31705}}

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