Kiran S. Kedlaya '96, a two-time Putnam fellow and resident of Quincy House, was awarded an Honorable Mention by the Morgan Prize Committee for his undergraduate research in math.
Kedlaya, a resident of Maryland and a math and physics concentrator, was recommended to the Morgan Prize Committee by Joe Gallian of the University of Minnesota, Duluth. In high school, Kedlaya was a three-time winner of the USA Math Olympiad and won two gold medals and a silver medal at the International Math Olympiad.
The Morgan Prize was endowed last year by Mrs. Brennie Morgan to "encourage research in mathematics by undergraduates." Kedlaya and Kannan Soundararajan, a Princeton graduate student, are the first students to be awarded this honor.
According to Mike Harris, the public information consultant for the Joint Policy Board of Mathematics, the organization which oversaw the process, the award was started in response to an incredibly small amount of undergraduate research done by comparison to graduate-level research.
The committee cited Kedlaya's "progress on a tough problem involving outplanar partitions of planar graphs that has brought acclaim from experts, who emphasize that he has made more progress than many professionals who have tackled it."
Kedlaya applied for the prize last December. Soundararajan received the first place $1,000 award.
The selection committee, consisting of members of the Mathematics Association of America, the American Mathematical Society, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), met and selected Soundararajan and Kedlaya from the group of applicants.
Students can receive applications directly from the Morgan Prize Committee and the SIAM World Wide The committee said Kedllaya's "impressive portfolio of four professional level research papers that demonstrate sophistication, depth and versatility far beyond what might be expected lot a student due to graduate in June 1996" was the reason for his award of Honorable Mention. Kedlaya, who plans to earn a Ph.D. and enter academics, also volunteers with the American Red Cross, plays chess, bridge and ultimate frisbee and sings in the Harvard Glee Club
Read more in News
Intellectualism in House Life: The Fourth Lie of Harvard?Recommended Articles
-
Chaos Work Earns McMullen Fields MedalHarvard Professor of Mathematics Curtis McMullen received one of the highest honors in the field of mathematics--the Fields medal--this August.
-
Harvard Sweeps Math ContestFourteen Harvard undergraduates were honored last night at a dinner at the Fogg Museum of Art for the winners of
-
Fifteen Minutes: Gnoshin' with Noam"He is the youngest professor ever tenured at Harvard," said Lowell house math concentrator Sameer Satija '01. True. "He has
-
Breaking the Curve"I 'm Statistically Significant." The words are emblazoned in blue letters across the front of his white T-shirt. They are
-
Fields of Concentrationways of mathematics. And here it is that the tutors are of great help, for on the whole they are
