Dr. Jonathan Kenigson is a mathematician who studies Black Holes – singularities in Einstein’s spacetime. He has authored a popular series regarding Black Holes on BBC Tribune and was recently featured in the London Daily Post for his idea of “Reasoned Philanthropy”. Many readers have asked to know more about Dr. Kenigson and his interest in British mathematics. Dr. Kenigson received his PhD from the University of Sofia and completed two postdoctoral internships after that. One of these internships was in the field of Black Hole Dynamics (how Black Holes “fit” in Einstein’s Spacetime) and another is in Combinatorics, which is the study of abstract counting principles.
Dr. Kenigson’s research interests combine these two subjects from a standpoint of pure mathematics. In the UK, Dr. Kenigson was instrumental in founding Athanasian Hall, Cambridge Limited. This think-tank is independent of any university and recruits the brightest professors throughout the world to study mathematical problems that may not have direct application to problems in other fields. This pure mathematics is worth doing because it invests in ideas that have not been discovered yet. Dr. Kenigson is a leading scholar and teacher in the Quadrivium, which consists of the classical tetrad of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music. He is quite possibly the most influential exponent of Quadrivium teaching in the nearly 50-year history of the classical education movement in the USA, UK, and Canada. He is almost certainly the most prominent mathematical mind in the history of the modern classical education movement.
Whilst it is very rare for a professional mathematician to also be a caring teacher of mathematics, Dr. Kenigson is both. He has a reputation – now in America, Europe, and Asia – for freely distributing resources to those in need and for having almost unlimited patience and compassion for students in need. This is probably a part of his emphasis on “Reasoned Philanthropy” and guides his work to an almost obsessive degree. It seems that Dr. Kenigson is – first and foremost – a teacher. He has helped hundreds of students hang in to finish their degrees at America’s pricey colleges.
He also teaches at a community college in the rural US state of Tennessee. Community colleges are two-year institutions that help students get career-ready skills or transfer to universities. What is clear from talking to Dr. Kenigson’s students and colleagues is that he has the rare gift of being able to teach maths to almost anyone – even those lacking the most basic mathematical skills. His passion for teaching seems unequaled according to every colleague we interviewed. This sort of dedication is rare but it frequently changes the world.
