… and Silver and Bronze!
This year’s Canadian IMO (International Mathematics Olympiad) had a clean-up year for medals at this year’s competition. The team, coached by Lindsey Shorser (an instructor with the Math Department), along with David Arthur, Ralph Furmaniak, and Alex Fink, won 6 medals (one for each of the team members). In addition, the team leader was Jacob Tsimerman, who was a former U of T undergraduate math specialist.
In total the Canadian team walked away with 3 gold medals, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals. This success ranks Canada 5th in the world out of 100 countries which is the best standing Canada has received since it started participating in the IMO in 1981.
The full story, complete with a picture of the team and a breakdown of the medals, can be found here
Further Stories
Our congratulations go to the team, its leaders and its coaches! Great work!
UofT Magazine recently sat down with a few of our past and current Putnam writers to profile the history of this competition and provide some “food for thought” for those interested in finding out about the types of questions asked.
The article can be found here
This year’s Putnam competition was written on Saturday, December 3rd by a group of 35 students. The results of this competition will be announced sometime in April 2012.
Recently PhD candidate Alex Bloemendal sat down with the University of Toronto’s Bulletin to talk about how his love of music, his passion for math and an “enthralling conversation about probability” was what drew him into the Specialist Mathematics program here in the Department.
The Bulletin calls Alex “a virtuoso on the piano” who’s “favourite toy [growing up] was his mother’s Texas Instruments calculator” and talks about how there “is a common understanding among mathematicians that math is in fact the basis of sound. Time, rhythm, meter, intervals and harmony all have a firm grounding in math.”
It then goes on to talk how, after some tough decisions, and a conversation with our own Professor Jeremy Quastel, Alex decided on doing his undergraduate degree right here at UofT.
The full article can be found on Page 8 here: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bulletin/PDF_issues/04-19-11_web.pdf
Professor George Elliott’s former PhD student, Andrew Toms, now at Purdue, has been awarded this year’s AMS Centennial Research Fellowship.
The Purdue announcement can be found here.
Department of Mathematics
Alumni
It is with great sadness that we report the death of Daryl Geller, professor of mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and former University of Toronto mathematics specialist. Daryl grew up in Toronto and attended the University of Toronto as a mathematics specialist winning many awards including high placements on the Putnam Competition. Upon his graduation in 1972 he attended Princeton University obtaining his Ph.D. in 1976 under the supervision of Elias Stein.
Dr. Hrant Hakobyan, a University of Toronto, Department of Mathematics postdoctoral fellow from July 2007 to June 2010 with
Professor Ilia Binder, has been awarded the 2010 Emil Artin Junior Prize in Mathematics.
An excerpt from the AMS notices posting: “Hrant Hakobyan of Kansas State University has been awarded the 2010 Emil Artin Junior Prize in Mathematics.
Established in 2001, the Emil Artin Junior Prize in Mathematics carries a cash award of US$1,000 and is presented usually every year to a student or former student of an Armenian university under the age of thirty-five for outstanding contributions to algebra, geometry, topology, and number theory—the fields in which Emil Artin made major contributions”
Congratulations go to Dr. Ian Zwiers as the winner of this year’s Malcolm Slingsby Robertson prize. This prize is awarded to a graduating PhD student who has demonstrated excellence in research.
Dr. Zwiers’ research was in the area of Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations under the supervision of Professor James Colliander. His thesis was entitled “Standing ring blowup solutions for the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation”.
Dr. Zwiers’ is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences in Vancouver.
Our congratulations go to Dr. Zwiers and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
Professor Kumar Murty (Chair of the Math Department) and event participants introduce themselves and tell a bit about their backgrounds
This past Saturday (May 29th) the University of Toronto held it’s Spring Reunion for Alumni who graduated in a year ending in 0 or 5. The Math Department held it’s own event as part of it entitled “A Celebration of Mathematics”. The turn-out was good and participants were treated to a series of three lectures from three distinct speakers.
Participants heard a brief history of the Department from Professor Kumar Murty, Chair. They then heard from one of the department’s undergraduate specialist math students and head of the undergraduate math union. The final talk was a brief taste of Professor Jeremy Quastel’s upcoming International Congress of Mathematics (ICM) talk.
More information on the event, along with more pictures, can be found at: http://www.math.toronto.edu/cms/spring-reunion-201/
Alumni, Events
On March 31st, staff, faculty, alumni and students gathered in Hart House to celebrate recent scholarship winners and donors. The Mathematics Department was proud to celebrate this event with a number of outstanding scholarship winners from the department as well as Professor George Elliott, an honoured donor.
Mathematics Scholarship Winners, (far right) Professor George Elliott (Donor), (center right) Professor Kumar Murty (Chair of Mathematics Department) and (center left) Professor Meric Gertler (Dean of Arts and Science)
Two former students of Professor Askold Khovanskii have won significant awards in Mathematics.
Valentina Kiritchenko was one of 3 winners of the
2009 Dynasty Foundation Award
Vladlen Timorin was one of 2 winners of the
2009 Pierre Deligne Award.
From their websites: “The Pierre Deligne Contest is a competition of young mathematicians of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia. The contest winner is awarded a three-year research grant. The aim of the contest is to help young mathematicians to carry out scientific research staying in their home countries. It was established in 2005 to support the most active young mathematicians working in Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia. Any person not older than 35 who has a PhD in mathematics and lives in any of the countries: Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, is eligible for the competition.”
The Dynasty Foundation contest for young mathematicians takes place in parallel with the Pierre Deligne Contest and pursues the same goals.
The department sends it’s warmest congratulations to both of them and wishes them all the best!
Alumni, Awards
