Adaptive infinite inpulse-response (IIR) notch filters have been widely studied for many years. However, further efforts are still to be made to pursue new algorithms which work better than the conventional plain gradient algorithm but have little increase in complexity. In this paper, we employ the gradient linearization, Taylor series expansion, and calculus of variations to derive a novel memoryless nonlinear gradient algorithm for a second-order adaptive IIR notch filter, which improves the estimation performance considerably. Approximate closed-form expressions for the stability bounds on the step size parameter and the steady-state coefficient variance are also derived. Extensive simulations indicate the significant improvement that may be achieved using the new algorithm, and verify the validity of the analytical results.Index Terms-Frequency estimation, gradient algorithm, infinite impulse-response notch filtering, performance analysis.