Scotch student wins gold at Maths Olympiad
It is a historic moment for us as a school to have a student win Gold at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Since the inception of the Olympiad in 1959, Scotch has only ever had two students reach the level of being selected to participate. The first was Akshay Venkatesh – who won Bronze at the Olympiad in 1994 and who last year was awarded the prestigious Fields Medal, regarded as the highest honour a Mathematician can receive and long been compared to the Nobel Prize for Mathematics.
This year, one of our Year 11 students, William Steinberg, has traversed the challenging path of reaching the International Mathematical Olympiad and has achieved a Gold Medal. To be selected as a member of the Australian team is in itself a formidable task. William achieved a perfect score in the Australian Mathematical Olympiad in March and was invited to the Australian Mathematics Trust Selection School in April along with 18 of the top Mathematics students in Australia. For almost two weeks they trained together and at the conclusion, William and five other students were selected to represent Australia at the International Mathematical Olympiad. This year's Olympiad was held in Bath, England, and had the highest ever number of participants. 621 high school students, the best in the world, from 112 countries gathered in July. The event spanned over 10 days with many opportunities to get to know one another and learn from each other, united by a common love of and excellence in Mathematics.
After nine hours of solving incredibly difficult problems, William placed 28th in the world resulting in a Gold Medal and the best performance in this year's Australian team.
It is an honour to congratulate William for his exceptional achievement.
