johnurschel

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  • NFL player publishes math papers in his spare time

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    03.22.2015

    If you were an NFL player, what would you do in between games? Live the high life? Spend more time working out? The Baltimore Ravens' John Urschel does something decidedly geekier: co-author math papers. The offensive lineman recently helped publish details of a "cascadic multigrid algorithm for computing the Fiedler vector of graph Laplacians" (no, we don't get it either), which would be impressive for any aspiring mathematician -- let alone one who spends his days crushing rivals on the football field. This isn't his first such paper, but it's notable that he's keeping up his academic pursuits even after graduating from Penn State and joining the big leagues.