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John Urschel

Assistant Professor of Mathematics; former Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman, Mit

Search every verified John Urschel interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. John Urschel, a former Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman and current assistant professor of mathematics at MIT, discussed his career and the intersection of his two fields in a September 2026 episode of the podcast Better in Person. He described how he concealed his math studies during NFL team flights by telling teammates he was reading a chess book, and he reflected on the strict amateurism rules he encountered at Penn State, noting that players could not accept even small perks like free hamburgers. Urschel also offered a broad definition of mathematics, describing it as a quantitative language used for reasoning across fields such as engineering, physics, and statistics. In a separate appearance, a 2015 Wavemaker Conversations interview was revisited in April 2026 in light of a new study on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in former NFL players. In that earlier conversation, Urschel spoke about setting "unreasonable goals," including earning a PhD in mathematics from a top university and becoming a titled chess player, and he credited his mother's perseverance through a difficult upbringing as an influence. The follow-up noted that Urschel suffered a concussion in 2015 that temporarily affected his ability to do advanced math, that he retired from football at age 26 without directly citing CTE concerns, and that he later earned his PhD from MIT and became an assistant professor there.

Recent appearances

  • The NFL Lineman Who Became an MIT Math Professor | Better in Person

    September 08, 2026 · 📺 Freakonomics Radio Network

    John Urschel is what you might call a double unicorn. He was good enough at football to play in the N.F.L., with the Baltimore Ravens. And he was good enough at math to get his Ph.D. from M.I.T. — while playing in the N.F.L.! John tells Stephen Dubner how he squeezed in his M.I.T. coursework during the N.F.L. season. On team flights, he kept the covers of his math books hidden. “It’s a chess book,” he told them. Stephen wants to know how a person ends up world-class at two things so far apart. Also, why did John turn down a call from Stanford? What does he actually love about hitting people?…

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  • John Urschel’s Unreasonable Goals: From the NFL to MIT

    August 28, 2026 · 📺 Wavemaker Conversations

    Former NFL offensive lineman John Urschel fell in love with math before he fell in love with football. He pursued both fields with equal intensity. How he has succeeded in both (his mother played an important role) is an inspiring story - and as good a reason as any to bring back this 2015 conversation from the Wavemaker archives. But I’m revisiting it now because of a major new study out this week that concluded at least one of every four former NFL players has been afflicted with the degenerative brain disease CTE, which is caused by the cumulative force of repeated hits to the head. The r…

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  • 80 Years of Computing with the Elimination Algorithm | John Urschel | JuliaCon Global 2025

    October 20, 2025 · 📺 The Julia Programming Language

    80 Years of Computing with the Elimination Algorithm by Dr. John Urschel PreTalx: https://pretalx.com/juliacon-2025/tal... The solution of a linear system, i.e., given a matrix A and vector b, finding a vector x satisfying Ax = b, is one of the oldest problems in mathematics. Gaussian elimination is one of the most fundamental and well-known techniques for solving linear systems, by factoring a matrix into the product of a lower and upper triangular matrix. Surprisingly, a number of questions regarding the numerical stability of this algorithm remains. In this talk, we will study the history…

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  • Math Rocks Perspectives - John Urschel

    October 27, 2024 · 📺 CSO Sahiba

    John Urschel is an assistant professor at MIT Mathematics and past academic coordinator for Mathroots. We discuss math journeys and tips/advice.

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  • MIT Reads: From the NFL to MIT with John Urschel & Louisa Thomas

    May 10, 2024 · 📺 MITLibraries

    Recorded on April 11, 2024 "From the NFL to MIT: A conversation with Prof. John Urschel & Louisa Thomas" For John Urschel, what began as an insatiable appetite for puzzles as a child developed into mastery of the elegant systems and rules of mathematics. By the time he was thirteen, Urschel was auditing a college-level calculus course. But when he joined his high school football team, a new interest began to eclipse the thrill he felt in the classroom. Against the odds, Urschel found a way to manage his double life as a scholar and an athlete. Weaving together two separate narratives, Ursche…

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  • John Urschel, MIT, "From Moments to Matrices"

    February 06, 2024 · 📺 Joint Mathematics Meetings

    John Urschel, MIT, gives the AMS Erdős Lecture for Students at the 2024 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco. This talk is entitled "From Moments to Matrices."

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  • Three Years of Computing with Alan | John Urschel | ASE60

    September 11, 2023 · 📺 The Julia Programming Language

    Over the past three years, Alan has served as an informal advisor for me, meeting every Saturday without fail. (We rescheduled, reluctantly, for the birth of my son.) We've talked all things numerical linear algebra, which I will touch on in this talk. Our conversations have also influenced my other work — and have given me many stories about Alan, which I will share with you as well. Time Stamps: 00:00 Welcome! 00:10 Help us add time stamps or captions to this video! See the description for details. Want to help add timestamps to our YouTube videos to help with discoverability? Find out mor…

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  • Celebrating Black Excellence: John Urschel, CFP Selection Committee

    February 28, 2023 · 📺 CFP

    In celebration of Black excellence, the College Football Playoff recognizes John Urschel, former CFP selection committee member who was an All-American offensive lineman for Penn State before playing professionally for three years with the Baltimore Ravens. Urschel is now a mathematician currently serving as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University after completing his PhD in math at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). #BlackHistoryMonth #BHM #CFBPlayoff

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  • Spotlight with Scientists in School: John C. Urschel, Mathematician and Former NFL Player

    September 22, 2022 · 📺 Scientists in School

    John C. Urschel is a Canadian-American mathematician and former professional American football player. John was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and as a child enjoyed math and logic puzzles. By the time he was 13, Urschel was auditing college-level calculus courses. He received his PhD in mathematics at MIT and is currently a Harvard Junior Fellow. His research is focused on graph theory, numerical analysis, and machine learning. John was named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” list of outstanding young scientists. John also played college football at Penn State and pursued an NFL career with the Baltim…

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  • Math Roots

    July 30, 2022 · 📺 MathCircles

    John Urschel described the Math Roots program at MIT. This presentation included a short application of generating functions to pairs of dice, and some other engaging problems from combinatorics.

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  • John Urschel - A conversation about the joys and struggles of three generations of mathematicians

    July 26, 2022 · 📺 princetonmathematics

    This talk is from the Spring 2022 Horizons Lecture at the Princeton University Department of Mathematics. Join us for a conversation between three mathematicians at varying stages of their careers, as they discuss each of their journeys into mathematics, and the lessons that they've learned along the way. John Urschel is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and recently completed his PhD in math at MIT. In 2017, Urschel was named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” list of outstanding young scientists. His research interests include numerical analysis, graph theory, and data science/machine l…

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  • Stress Minimization for Low-Diameter Graphs, John Urschel, MIT

    July 20, 2022 · 📺 运筹OR帷幄(Operation Research China Society)

    Date: 2020-08-09 Topic: Stress Minimization for Low-Diameter Graphs Guest: John Urschel, MIT Canadian-American mathematician and retired NFL American football player. His research focuses on numerical analysis, graph theory, data science and machine learning.

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Notable quotes

“I remember when I played, you could not make a dime. You couldn't take a free hamburger. And really at Penn State, they were really honest about this. I mean, Paterno was very, very serious about this. And so, this was legitimate. It's a tough it's a touch strict, and I think it was too strict before. I mean, for instance, you know, I was at Penn State and not that I have any complaints about it, but I remember like,”

Other executives at Mit

  • Justin Solomon, Associate Dean of Engineering Education; Associate Professor of EECS

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →