INFORMATION ON THE

PUTNAM MATH COMPETITIONS

In brief, year 2002 saw our Putman team ranked 17th nationally; a single, yet decisive, step forward from last year, toward the long sought goal of reaching the top ten. Sevak won an Honorable Mention with a splendid performance. The team consisted of the same three members as last year. Aside from Sevak Mkrtchyan, Rupert Venzke and Dorian Croitoru continued their extraordinary input in tearing down at the ever so clever and challenging Putnam problem sets. Congratulations!

The year is 2001 AD. Putting his right foot forward as a freshman, Dorian Croitoru, a native of Moldova, ranked 37th nationally in the individual scores; this outstanding performance landed him an Honorable Mention. A very fine performance came from Sevak Mkrtchyan. He placed 69th nationally. Two problems were solved by Rupert Venzke who thus made a remarkable contribution to the overall performance of our Team. And the Team, by the way, placed 18th this year. This is five steps forward from last year, and five behind our best performance ever on the Putnam Competition. Smashing! Hats off to the Team.

We rang in a new millennium with a Putnam team that placed 23rd nationally. The team members were Silviu Predoiu, Jonathan Holland, and Chad Newell. Silviu placed 20th in individual scores after severe insomnia the night before. [He had almost foregone participation. That would have cost him $250, plus the national recognition as a prize winner in the competition. Since his ranking this year was considerably higher that it was last year, when he slept soundly the night before and arguably through part of the exam, we are now considering inducing insomnia as a performance enhancer.] Congratulations to all Pitt participants.

With a fine performance, Silviu Predoiu, an undergraduate Chancellor Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, obtained an Honorable Mention in the 1999 Putnam Competition. We did not compete as a team in 1999.

In 1998 our Putnam Team was ranked 13th in the nation. This was our best performance ever as a team. I believe we placed number one among all State Universities. Dragos Ghioca had a great showing by palcing 10th nationally. Congratulations to Dragos. Of note was Chad Newell's performance. As a freshman on his first Putnam outing Chad placed in the top quartile. That is excellent and very encouraging.

Year 1997 produced our first Putnam Competition winner. This was accomplished in a dashing performance by Ovidiu Savin. Savin is an IMO gold medal winner (1995). He now studies with Caffarelli at the University of Texas.

In 1996 Savin enters the scene by placing 7th nationally on the Putnam Competition.

Excellent information on the Putnam is available on Oprea's page at Harvard. Click on his "Math Page", then on "Math Contests Archives".

Additional reading is found at Professor Hales' page.

More stuff here.

[ Info on the Discrete Math Seminar ]