Nancy Blachman has given a great deal to Gathering 4 Gardner over the past four and a half years in her role as Chair of G4G. After G4G founder, Tom Rodgers, she has served longer in that position than any other person. She has given time, commitment, energy, sweat, vision, openness to new ideas, and provided funding through many avenues, including friendly persuasion and her own resources. She has shown bold and effective initiative and leadership.
Nancy wears many hats, and among her greatest achievements is founding the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival organization. It has gone from strength to strength and is thriving beyond all expectations in this COVID era. One of its goals is to reach more young people and awaken them to the joys of math exploration by providing an alternative to competitions.
Among her numerous Gathering 4 Gardner achievements, Nancy has been instrumental in bringing first-time guests to G4G through scholarship funding. The hope is that these attendees will catch the excitement of what Martin Gardner knew about recreational mathematics, and that they in turn will spread this excitement to others and share their talents with attendees at G4G semi-annual meetings. Although Nancy has stepped down as chair, we are fortunate that she is remaining on the G4G board.
In honor of Nancy and in appreciation for all that she has done for the G4G community we are pleased to announce The Nancy Blachman Scholarship and Outreach Fund. This has been set up to award scholarships to increase diversity at G4G conferences.
It includes bringing in more individuals from previously underrepresented groups. An anonymous donor pledged $14,000 to this fund (in honor of the upcoming G4G14) and we were able to match it thanks to other donors. With $28K+ raised we feel we are off to a perfect start (since 28 is a perfect number*). More details will be announced soon.
*A perfect number is equal to the sum of its positive divisors, excluding the number itself.
We thank Nancy for all that she has done for our community and all we know she will continue to do in the future.
Sincerely,
The G4G Board