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Will J. Flintoft ’26 was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship last month, one of nine students from Australia to receive the honor this year.

Flintoft is a senior in Kirkland House with a joint concentration in Philosophy and Mathematics, and hails from the state of Victoria in Australia. He has spent his time at Harvard studying the intersection of the two fields, and is currently writing a thesis on Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, a logical problem concerning how math is proved.

Outside of academics, Flintoft is also general manager of the Harvard Krokodiloes, Harvard’s oldest a cappella group, and was previously Managing Editor of the Harvard Review of Philosophy.

The Rhodes allows students to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Oxford free of cost and is considered to accelerate future career success. Though Flintoft is already completing a concurrent master’s degree in Applied Mathematics at the School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences, he will spend his time at Oxford completing his master’s in philosophy and math.

“I’m really excited to dive a little bit deeper into the world of research mathematics and research philosophy. I think that it will be cool to see what the intersection of those two disciplines look like,” he said.

Flintoft is the first of this year’s senior class to be awarded the scholarship, with the American results releasing in November. Last year, five Harvard students were selected from the United States, in addition to three other international students — though an Australian applicant from Harvard has not been selected since 2016.

He said he applied to the scholarship in August, more than one month before it is due for American applicants, since the process is “slightly more expedited” for international students.

Before being awarded the honor, Flintoft said he completed two rounds of interviews, the first being remote. When he received a call during the second week of classes that he was invited to the final round of interviews in Victoria, he packed his bags and left for his home state. He was soon notified he had won the Rhodes, which he said was a “really exciting piece of news to hear”.

“I’m still soaking it in,” he said. “It’s something that I think I’m still stunned by and am really excited about as well.”

Flintoft was drawn to the scholarship because of the opportunities at Oxford to connect with academics across many disciplines, such as seminars and meetings with fellow scholars.

“What really drew me to the Rhodes as a fellowship opportunity was the way in which there’s this very explicit welding together of your intellectual life,” he said.

After his studies, Flintoft hopes that the scholarship will prepare him for a career that leaves a broader impact at the intersection of math and philosophy.

“In the Australian case, a number of Rhodes scholars have gone on to do really fascinating, interesting things that have had a lot of impact, and that is a really good calling to have as a young person,” he said.

—Staff writer Jordanos S. Sisay can be reached at jordanos.sisay@thecrimson.com.