Mathematics students enjoy stellar performance at Putnam Competition

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The results of the 76th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition are now in, with an excellent performance by the University of Iowa's undergraduates who participated in the event.

The Putnam is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate students enrolled in colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. Administered by the Mathematical Association of America, it is widely recognized as one of the most prestigious university-level math competitions in the world.

The exam is considered to be exceedingly difficult. Despite drawing the most talented young mathematicians in the U.S. and Canada, the exam’s median score is often zero or one point out of 120 possible. Below are the scores of UI’s undergraduate participants:

  • Patrick Hiatt - 31
  • Noah Kaufmann - 11
  • Keshav Sutrave - 11
  • Bing Yue - 10

The team, consisting of undergraduates Hiatt, Kaufmann, and Sutrave, was ranked 27th out of 554 institutions that participated in the competition.

Hiatt, a sophomore, obtained a personal top 146.5 rank, and was noted in the Putnam summary among the year's top 200 performers. Last year, as a freshman, he achieved a score of 22.

Kaufmann and Sutrave were ranked 640.5 and Bing Yue was ranked 945, out of 4275 contestants in total.

The Iowa Team of the Putnam Competition is led by Ionut Chifan and Miodrag Iovanov, both assistant professors in the Department of Mathematics, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.