In eighth grade, when most students were still struggling to solve for x, Dmitry “Mitka” Vaintrob ’11 was taking college-level calculus at the University of Oregon. By high school, he had moved on to graduate-level courses. And at 18, he was awarded $150,000 in Intel and Siemens prizes for his investigation of string topology.
Today, Vaintrob conducts research in number theory with Professor Barry C. Mazur. “Harvard is blessed with undergraduate math majors who are the best in the world,” says Mazur. “But even here, Dmitry stands out as someone who speaks the language of mathematics as if it were his native tongue. It seems effortless for him.”
When asked why he loves math, Vaintrob replies, “It’s beautiful.” Though many people wouldn’t think of describing math as an artistic endeavor, Vaintrob explained that there is an aesthetic component. “When I’m doing math, I sometimes feel like I’m a writer,” he adds.
Although Vaintrob is leagues ahead of his peers in abstract mathematical concepts, he admits that there are occasional gaps in his mathematical knowledge. When it comes to applying certain techniques, for example, he does make mistakes.
“For physics, he was really good at coming up with tricks to do stuff,” recalls Francois W. Greer ’11, a friend who took Physics 153 with Vaintrob freshman year. “But when it came to actually calculating derivatives, he was not so good, because he learned that stuff in fourth grade or something.”
“I’m always struck because he has a very intuitive, visual approach to math,” says Greer. “It’s easy to get bogged down by details and calculations, but whenever you ask him something, he always reduces it to something visual.”
“Mitka is very, very, very smart, but totally hilarious because he’s off in his own universe sometimes,” said Charlene C. Wang ’11, a friend of Vaintrob’s. “Everyone loves him.”
