The Tangente Awards aim to highlight the connections between mathematics and other fields, particularly literature and the arts. Each award honors some of the people who forge these connections, with works of mathematical art presented as prizes. Whether you read Tangente or simply enjoy mathematical culture, you are invited to take part, either by voting or by creating content yourself and submitting it to one of the juries.
For bookworms, the Tangente book award -------------------------------------------------------
Every year, the Tangente Book Award goes to a popular mathematics book that inspires readers to explore the subject further. First, a selection of books published between January 1 of the previous year and May 30 of the current year is put to an online vote. Browse the list below, then register (or sign in) on the Tangente website to access the voting page. You can then support your favorite. Voting remains open until September 30, and you may change your vote as often as you like, right up to the last minute.
Once voting closes, the five books with the most votes are submitted to a jury comprising members of the Club Tangente and the previous year’s winner. Jérôme Cottenceau, author of *Maths font leur cinéma* (Dunod, 2021) and winner of the 2021 Tangente Book Award, will therefore be invited to join the jury.
After the jury’s deliberations, the winner and any runners-up will be announced at the Tangente Awards ceremony, which, if all goes well, will be held in person on Sunday, December 4 at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. It will also be a chance for us all to get together and celebrate the 35th anniversary of your favorite magazine. Save the date!
Do vote—and encourage your friends to vote too. Browse the selection and read the corresponding reviews published in Tangente to help you decide (the issue number is given in parentheses below). All the reviews are freely available at **www.tangente-mag.com/les\_ndl.php**. Full rules and a link to the voting page at **www.tropheestangente.com/PT2022.php**
For mathematics education enthusiasts, the Tangente high school students’ award --------------------------------------------------------
Since 2016, the Tangente Book Award’s younger sibling has spread to schools in France and abroad. Each year, a selection of ten books is offered to high school students who volunteer to take part, from tenth grade (French seconde) to the final year of high school. This is not about cramming from textbooks packed with one exercise after another, but about reading books of every kind, from graphic novels and illustrated essays to biographies and novels. What do they have in common? They all touch on mathematics in one form or another.
The initiative is increasingly successful: just over forty schools have signed up for this new session, bringing together more than 600 students (and their teachers) from a wide range of backgrounds across France—and even beyond, with several French-speaking high schools abroad. The award runs throughout the school year, during which the participating students read the selected books and rank them in order of preference.
Beyond the ranking itself, the initiative has prompted debates about the criteria to use and the voting system to adopt, while also fostering interdisciplinary discussion. School librarians and literature teachers have been able to add their own personal touch, particularly through oral projects developed around the award. Several schools have also successfully organized meetings with the authors of the books in contention.
The school calendar being what it is, the results have just been announced: the 2022 Tangente High School Students’ Award goes to *Madame Einstein by Marie Benedict (Presses de la Cité, 2018). This novel about Mileva Marić’s life is built around the now-debated hypothesis that Mileva contributed, without receiving recognition, to the research of her husband, Albert Einstein. Two commendations were also awarded: one to the novel Sophie Germain, la femme cachée des mathématiques by Sylvie Dodeller (L’École des Loisirs, 2020), and the other to the graphic novel Comme par hasard* by Cyril Bonin (Glénat, 2021).
See the full selection at: **www.tropheestangente.com/PTL2022.php**
For aspiring writers, the best article award ------------------------------------------------------------
Do you enjoy writing, explaining and sharing ideas? Then the Best Article Award is for you. Use your vacation to think about your favorite subject, then take the plunge! You can write about any subject, and the possibilities are endless. Whether or not you are a professional, try your hand at popularizing your current research topic. Have you been following any amusing recent discoveries? Share them with the readers of Tangente. Have you spotted mathematical themes in the work of artists, writers, painters or filmmakers? Write a crossover article. Do you work in a little-known field that uses mathematics? Tell us about it. Have you unearthed a gem while exploring old manuscripts on Gallica? Did you excel in your Grand Oral exam and are now considering turning it into an article? Are you spending your vacation at a place renowned for mathematics? Any occasion is a good one to put pen to paper.
To enter, register now and submit your article by September 30, 2022. It must meet Tangente’s editorial standards: no more than four pages (13,500 characters including spaces), no first-person writing… It must also be aimed at a broad audience (some more technical passages are allowed, but they must appear in a sidebar). The winning article will be published in Tangente, and its author will receive a work of mathematical art by Denise Demaret-Pranville.
Do you need reference material, or are you wondering whether your subject has already been covered in Tangente? The free, publicly accessible Publimath database (**publimath.univ-irem.fr**) will answer your questions about past mathematical publications (excluding research papers).
Rules, registration, and details of previous winners:
**www.tropheestangente.com/PMA.php**
For game fanatics, the Affaire de logique award --------------------------------------------------
Although the Bernard-Novelli Award has been suspended for the past two years because too few people entered, a new Tangente award has just been launched: the Affaire de logique Award. This competition invites entrants to create original puzzles in the style of those published each week in Le Monde for more than twenty-five years by Gilles Cohen, Élisabeth Busser and, in recent years, Jean-Louis Legrand.
The idea took root in 2021, during an inaugural competition organized to mark the publication of issue 200 of Tangente. It was a resounding success! More than forty high-quality problems were submitted to the jury, which awarded prizes and commendations in five categories: numbers, geometry, logic, algorithms and curiosities. Following this strong showing, the Club Tangente decided to make the event a permanent part of its activities.
All our readers may enter until October 30, submitting up to four entries: one by April 30, one by June 30 (stages 1 and 2, now closed), one by August 31 (stage 3) and one by October 30 (stage 4). At each stage, the jury shortlists one problem, which appears in the next issue of Tangente. You can find the first of these shortlisted problems here: " 20606-Gentil! "
So don’t hesitate—give it a try by visiting **affairedelogique.com/concours2022.php** and signing in with your email address and password. There you will find the full rules and access to your problems, which you may edit until the deadline.