Serving Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia

Brief Bio for Brent Morris

S. Brent Morris has a PhD and MA in mathematics from Duke University and an MS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. He is believed to have the only doctorate in the world in card shuffling; his dissertation is entitled Permutations by Cutting and Shuffling: A Generalization to Q Dimensions. He retired after 25 years as a mathematician with the federal government and has taught at Duke and Johns Hopkins Universities. He is now Director of Membership Development for the Scottish Rite Masons in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Magic Tricks, Card Shuffling, and Dynamic Computer Memories (MAA, 1998), two U.S. patents, nine technical articles, and nine books on Freemasonry.

He became interested in the perfect shuffle in high school and has pursued its mathematics for over 35 years. He worked his way through college and graduate school as a magician. He was an ACM Distinguished Lecturer, an MAA Visiting Lecturer, a SIAM Visiting Lecturer, and he has been invited to lecture at the Smithsonian Institution, the Board on Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, AT&T Bell Labs, NEC Research Institute, the National War College, the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the MAA/AMS, and over 100 colleges.