Congratulations to our Putnam team (Jude Melancon, Nickolas VanMeter and Daniel Whitman), and thanks to the Putnam coach (Professor Jacek Cygan), and to Suat Namli (who gave seminars on problem solving prior to the Putnam Exam).
An LSU team of 3 members finished 21st on the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. The exam was taken by 3640 of the brightest US and Canadian students from 508 colleges and universities with 402 institutions fielding 3 person teams. Time magazine described it as possibly the hardest math test in the world. It is usually taken by only the very best students and yet the median score on the 12 problem, 6 hour exam was 1 point out of a possible 120 points. Daniel Whitman scored 31.7 and ranked 196.5. Nick VanMeter scored 30 and ranked 239.
The top three teams on this years exam were Princeton, Harvard, and MIT. LSU finished a phenomenally high 21st out of 402. The LSU team members were Jude
Melancon, Nickolas VanMeter and Daniel Whitman. Two are part of the Chancellor's Future Leaders in Research program, and Nickolas VanMeter has a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.