Imagine you have 3 muffins and 5 hungry students. Everyone wants a fair share, but no one’s settling for crumbs. How do you divide them so you maximize the smallest piece given? Simple enough? Go ahead and try it! What if it were 5 muffins and 3 students? Or 6 muffins and 10? Or 4 and 7? The deeper you go, the trickier, and more fascinating the puzzle becomes.
This kind of boundless inquisitiveness is at the heart of what Nancy Blachman does. She doesn’t just love math - she turns it into an adventure. A champion of math play, a.k.a. recreational math, she has revolutionized how kids engage with mathematics, encouraging discovery and turning numbers into something intriguing.
In Nancy’s childhood home, math was a living, breathing entity. Seeing how Nelson Blachman, her father, enjoyed mathematics made Nancy aware that mathematical problem solving is both fun and enlightening. Nelson, a mathematician, physicist, and engineer extraordinaire, didn’t just do mathematics - he loved it. Even after retiring, he kept going to the office, not because he had to, but because he enjoyed solving problems. That passion was influential in Nancy’s explorations with puzzles from the quarterly Saint Mary’s Math Contest qualifying problem sets. When she struggled with a problem, Nelson would suggest an alternate problem that often gave her ideas for understanding and solving the original problem.
That spirit of playful curiosity has never left her. Even now, Nancy can’t resist a good puzzle. When she goes out to dinner, she doesn’t just pay the check - she plays with it, adding a tip so that the total is a palindrome, as well as an appreciation of the service that she received. Most people just add a specified percent to their bill and move on, but Nancy? She sees a hidden game, a challenge to uncover.
With degrees in Applied Mathematics from the University of Birmingham in England, Computer Science from Stanford, and Operations Research from Berkeley, and stints at Wolfram Research, Bell Labs, Hewlett Packard, Nancy returned to Stanford to teach Problem Solving with Mathematica between 1990 and 1997. Instead of giving a final exam, she had students work on their own projects and present them to class, taking great pleasure in their creativity and original approaches. In addition to teaching, she wrote several books, including Mathematica: A Practical Approach and, drawing on students’ comments, continually updated it, strengthening her conviction that education should be hands-on, process-oriented and ever-changing.
What if math wasn’t a race but a playground? That’s exactly what Nancy envisioned when she created JRMF. As a high school student, she eagerly awaited the Saint Mary’s Math Contest (SMMC) qualifying problem sets. She loved that there were ten problems to choose from - if one didn’t interest her, she could focus on another. This freedom shaped JRMF’s philosophy. When she discovered that SMMC had been discontinued, she decided to create something new - not a competition, but a festival where students, either individually or collaboratively, could explore problems at their own pace.
The first Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival (JRMF) was held in 2007 at Google, honoring Julia Robinson, the mathematician who famously helped solve Hilbert’s 10th problem. JRMF was designed around low-floor, high-ceiling problems; accessible to everyone yet rich enough to sustain deep exploration.
One classic JRMF challenge is: “Can you completely cover an 8x8 chessboard with two diagonally opposite corners removed using 2x1 dominos?”
At festivals, students physically tile the board, testing different strategies. Some quickly realize something isn’t working, while others persist, searching for hidden patterns. The problem isn’t about speed - it’s about experimentation, pattern recognition, and discovery.
JRMF’s impact is captured by a graduate student volunteer who revealed at the JRMF hosted by Pixar in 2019 that he had attended the very first JRMF at Google in 2007. Back then, he hadn’t found his math classes engaging, but one JRMF problem captivated him so much that he spent an entire week thinking about it. That experience changed his appreciation for math forever.
Stories like his aren’t rare. Debbie Seidell, a math program coordinator at Acera School, described a similar transformation at a JRMF she hosted: "The excitement in the room was huge. Activities were all excellent, and everyone had a great time with them. I'm glad we were able to show this group of kids that not only is math fun, but it's a social activity - something you can share with each other."
From a single festival at Google to a global phenomenon in 30 states and 20 countries - JRMF is spreading math magic worldwide!
Nancy’s commitment to mathematical play is also evident in her role as the president of the board of Gathering 4 Gardner(G4G). Inspired by the legendary Martin Gardner - whose Scientific American columns introduced generations to mathematical puzzles - G4G brings together mathematicians, magicians, artists, and puzzle enthusiasts to revel in sharing favorite puzzles, magic tricks, word games, among other things.
Remember that muffin problem from earlier? Well, at the Twelfth Gathering for Gardner (G4G12), Nancy gave attendees a JRMF puzzle booklet. The challenge caught the eye of Professor William Gasarch, who became so intrigued that he explored it deeply with the help of students, generalizing the puzzle to arbitrary numbers of muffins and students. This work led to a published paper and ultimately the book Mathematical Muffin Morsels: Nobody Wants a Small Piece - all sparked by a “simple” puzzle in Nancy’s booklet.
Nancy embodies the curious, playful spirit of mathematics. From JRMF to G4G, she has created spaces where math is an invitation to explore rather than a subject to fear. Her legacy isn’t in degrees or accolades but in the people she has inspired to see math as a world of discovery. She has cracked the code to make math irresistible. And thanks to her, the next generation of curious minds will keep playing, puzzling, and exploring - one problem at a time.