Our undergraduate team in the latest William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition exam competition featured phenomenal performances, with one of the team members ranking in the top 16 of all 4,229 total participants. The Putnam Competition, founded in 1938, is the most prestigious national college-level competition in mathematics and is currently run by the Mathematical Association of America. The median score on this very challenging exam this year was 2 points out of 120.
One of the Ohio State team members, Ankan Bhattacharya, ranked in the top 16 of all 4,229 total Putnam participants in the competition. His exceptional performance resulted in a prize of $1,000. In addition, Ohio State team members Jake Huryn, Rushil Raghavan and Dennis Sweeney all ranked highly, in the 199-478.5 band among all participants. This year's Ohio State Putnam team had 22 student members, and the median score of the Ohio State team was 10.5 points.
Hans Parshall, our Zassenhaus Visiting Professor, ran the "Putnam seminar" (1181H) and organized the Putnam exam for the Ohio State team.
“I am proud of my 1181H students,” Dr. Parshall said. “These four high-scoring students prepared independently and their success is their own.”
“I am finishing up my third year at OSU and am a math major,” Ragahavan said. “I first took the Putnam my sophomore year because some of my friends told me it would be fun. After next year, I plan to go to graduate school and pursue a PhD in mathematics.”
Huryn, another team member, is a third-year math major.
“I plan to go to graduate school for mathematics,” Huryn said. “More immediately, this summer I'll be part of Dr. Sergei Chmutov's Knots and Graphs working group, and next summer I'll be participating in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's math REU, which was postponed from this summer.”
To learn more about the Putnam Competition on the organization’s website. A list of the 2019 winners is also available online.
