Professor of Mathematics Joseph Silverman ’77 was elected to be president of the American Mathematical Society from 2027 to 2029. Silverman will officially begin his term as president next year, after a year shadowing the current president as president-elect starting Feb. 1.
Silverman sees his new role as an “opportunity to be the public face of the mathematics community,” while also contributing to the AMS’s internal work, he said in an interview with The Herald. “It’s a pretty big position, but I’m looking forward to it,” he added.
The AMS, a 137-year-old organization, aims to promote and support research and connections for the mathematical community.
As part of the position, the AMS president meets with members of Congress to advocate for mathematics funding and represent the U.S. mathematics community at international conferences, Silverman explained.
Once he assumes the position, Silverman added that he hopes to increase the number of members who “view AMS as their organization,” improve meeting attendance and expand opportunities for connection within the field.
“At math conferences, there are talks, and those are useful — you find out what other people are doing,” he explained. “But even more important are the interpersonal interactions that people do over lunch and dinner in-between talks.”
Silverman was a member of the Executive Committee of the Council for the AMS from 2009 to 2013. He also served on the AMS Board of Trustees from 2015 to 2025, chairing the board in 2018 and 2023. After years of involvement in AMS governance, he said he is excited to “meet even more people.”
Silverman described his previous roles as more “behind-the-scenes” than his upcoming position. The Board of Trustees is responsible for fiduciary aspects of the organization and the executive committee makes “top-level policy decisions,” he said.
But as president, Silverman will be on all six of the organization’s policy committees — which provide the society direction on activities in various areas — and will set meeting agendas alongside the chairman of the Board of Trustees and the CEO.
Jill Pipher, a professor of mathematics and a former president of the AMS, described Silverman as a “wonderful colleague” and “dedicated researcher and teacher,” adding that his time on the Board of Trustees “will be invaluable in his role as president.”
Professor of Mathematics Brendan Hassett said in an interview with The Herald that he “wasn’t actually that surprised” to learn that Silverman had been elected to be president of the AMS.
“He’s really done a lot to try to make it easier for people to enter the field, to become part of the community,” Hassett said, referencing Silverman’s time as a thesis advisor and as “the author of probably the most influential textbooks ever written in his subject area, in number theory.”
Silverman has authored nine textbooks, which Pipher described as “classics in these subjects.”
“He has been a major force in the mathematics profession over the last several decades, in research, pedagogy, service and leadership, all of which make him an exceptionally qualified leader of a major professional society like the AMS,” Pipher wrote.
Hassett noted that Silverman is a “founder” and “central” member of the field of arithmetic dynamics, which Hassett described as the “interface of dynamics and number theory.”
Silverman served as chair of Brown’s Department of Mathematics from 2001 to 2004, and again in 2008. He has previously received fellowships in mathematics from the Sloan Foundation and Guggenheim Foundation.
“The society as a whole tries to have a huge impact across all of mathematics,” Silverman said, emphasizing the AMS’s efforts to keep textbook prices “affordable” and their free online research publication — Notices of the American Mathematical Society — where Silverman currently serves as interim editor-in-chief.
“He embodies a lot of what I would hope the society would be looking for in terms of its leadership,” Hassett added. He also said that creating the opportunities for the next generation to learn research mathematics and participate in creating new ideas in mathematics is “close to the top” of his priorities of what the society should be doing.
“It’s always wonderful to have Brown faculty in these nationally visible roles and so (with) someone that I’ve worked with so closely, it’s especially gratifying,” Hassett said.
“Making the AMS go takes a community effort,” Silverman wrote in an email to The Herald. “Being elected to help lead that community for a couple of years is a great honor.”
Samah Hamid is a senior staff writer at the Herald. She is from Sharon, Massachusetts and plans to concentrate in Biology. In her free time, you can find her taking a nap, reading, or baking a sweet treat.
