2026 Gentry Lecture: Moon Duchin

What is the weight of a vote? One of the most powerful principles in voting rights goes by the name of “One Person, One Vote” and holds broadly that “the weight and worth of the citizens’ votes” should be made as equal as possible. But how to measure voting power is an open question, and one prominent Supreme Court Justice warned his colleagues that their good intentions would lead into a “mathematical quagmire.” He was not wrong! These days the law around voting rights is changing fast and it’s time to take another close look at what it means to ensure a fair and undiluted vote for all.

Lecture open to the public Thursday, March 19, 2026, at 5:30pm in Annenberg Forum, 111 Carswell Hall.

Reception following the talk in the Green Room of Reynolda Hall

Moon Duchin (MS’99, PhD’05) is a Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at the University of Chicago.  Her background in pure math centers on geometry, topology, groups, and dynamics; her applied work uses these tools to build algorithms and models to study the mechanisms of democracy.  She runs a multidisciplinary lab bringing math and computing into conversation with law, policy, and geography.  Duchin has served as an expert in numerous voting rights court cases around the country, and her scholarly work has been recognized with an NSF CAREER award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Sloan Professorship at SLMath (formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute) and by election as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.  She is also an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, which is dedicated to the study of complex systems.