Richard Rusczyk, born 21 September 1971, is the founder of Art of Problem Solving Inc. and a co-author of the Art of Problem Solving textbooks. Rusczyk was a national MATHCOUNTS participant in 1985, and he won the USA Math Olympiad in 1989. He is one of the co-creators of the Mandelbrot Competition, and the director of the USA Mathematical Talent Search. He also founded the San Diego Math Circle. Every month, Rusczyk works on the MATHCOUNTS website to create Mathcounts Minis, where he explains problems and concepts.
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Rusczyk studied chemical engineering at Princeton University and graduated in 1993. He served on the board for ARML and managed the Western ARML site at one point. Rusczyk holds the status of administrator on the Art of Problem Solving website, where his username is "rrusczyk."
''The Art of Problem Solving''
In 1994, Rusczyk and Sandor Lehoczky wrote the Art of Problem Solving books, designed to prepare students for mathematical competitions by teaching them concepts and problem solving methods rarely taught in school. These books lent their name to the company he founded in 2003. After working for four years as a bond trader for D. E. Shaw & Co., Rusczyk created the Art of Problem Solving website, which provides resources for middle and high school students to develop their mathematics and problem solving abilities. These include real-time competitions to solve math problems and on-line tools to learn how to solve problems with increasing difficulty as well as math forums. As of May 19, 2019, there have been 913,086 topics with a total of 8,233,708 posts on the site. Rusczyk has also published the Art of Problem Solving series of books aimed at a similar audience. The site also provides fee-based online mathematics classes, which range from Prealgebra to Group Theory and Calculus. Rusczyk founded and serves on the board of the nonprofit Art of Problem Solving Foundation, which manages the United States of America Mathematical Talent Search and finances numerous local math initiatives around the United States. In 2012, Rusczyk won the MATHCOUNTS distinguished alumnus award. In 2014, Rusczyk won the Paul Erdős Award from the World Federation of National Mathematics Competitions. In 2020, Mathcounts got canceled because of the coronavirus. AoPS then hosted an online version known as Mathcounts Week. AoPS also hosted the AIME as the AOIME.
