It is with much enthusiasm that GR Gokul, Sub-Collector of Devikulam, in Idukki district of Kerala, narrates how he spoke to his mathematics professor after about a decade. Professor A Vijayakumar had dialled Gokul’s number, as he was trying to get back in touch with the talented students who have taken part in the Regional Maths Olympiad (RMO) of the past 25 years to bring them together to mark its silver jubilee early next year. For those on that list, the Olympiad was the stepping stone to the beginning of a successful career.
“As a native of Palakkad, I did not receive much training for my Engineering entrance exam. When I secured the second place at the Regional Maths Olympiad, it gave me the confidence to excel in my future endeavours. From then on, everything was possible. I graduated from NIT-Calicut, Kozhikode, in Electronics Engineering and passed my civil services exam in the first attempt,” says Gokul. He secured the second place in RMO 2005.
Donning the role of a coordinator of the RMO in Kerala since 1990, Professor Vijayakumar has seen some exceptional talents like Gokul pass through the National and International Maths Olympiad to hold highly reputed positions in some of the best organisations in the world. Vijayakumar is a professor in Mathematics at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) and writes popular articles on various aspects of Mathematics, in Malayalam. More than just coordinating the event, he has led around 400 such students to success.
Now, he is planning a reunion of all those who were qualified for INMO during 1991-2004 in February 2015 at the CUSAT campus after the Regional Maths Olympiad scheduled to be held on December 7. Vijayakumar has contacted more than 50 of them and is in search of the others.
“For those who love the subject and want to acquire laurels in the field, the get-together will be an opportunity to meet great talents in the field of Mathematics. The subject has a much wider scope than what we can imagine. Only when budding talents are given the opportunity to understand the possibilities, will they make a target to achieve them,” says Vijayakumar.
How the Maths Olympiad began
It was in 1894, in Hungary that the concept of organising a talent hunt in the field of Maths originated, with the Eotvos Mathematical Competition. In 1959, this became the International Mathematical Olympiad with the participation of seven countries from the East European block. India started participating in 1989 when Germany hosted it and secured the 15th position among 50 countries. Since then, about 400 students have appeared for the National Olympiad, breaking the conventional belief that Mathematics is a hard nut to crack.
The Olympiad is first held at the regional level, Regional Mathematical Olympiad, during October-December. Those who qualify participate at the national level, Indian National Mathematical Olympiad (INMO), held in February annually and the final round, the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), is held in July. At present, more than 80 countries participate in this war of minds.
Prizes, Scholarships and Follow-up programmes
Five toppers of the Kerala RMO will be awarded Professor CS Venkataraman Memorial prize and a cash prize of Rs 5,000 each, sponsored by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment. All students selected for INMO will be given merit certificates and INMO awardees are eligible for scholarships from the National Board for Higher Mathematics, a unit of the Department of Atomic Energy, for higher studies.
Kerala’s first break
It was only on December 2, 1990, that Kerala first participated in the Olympiad.
“Then second rank holder in RMO, Asha Alex of Mar Ivanios College, Thiruvananthapuram, became the second rank holder at the Indian National Maths Olympiad in 1991. This gave me the confidence to organise this event and show the rest of India that Kerala students are very talented in Maths,” says Vijayakumar.
The NBHM has been organising Mathematical Olympiads in India. About 20 students from the RMO will be selected for INMO, and 30 of the toppers will be invited for a training camp to select an Indian team, consisting of six members, for IMO. This year the IMO will be held in Thailand. India hosted the IMO only once — in 1996. The best performance of the country was in 2001 in the United States, when India secured the seventh rank, with two Gold, two Silver, and two Bronze medals.
Sandeep Varma of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Trippunithura, secured the first rank in RMO-1997 and in 1998 secured 100 per cent marks in INMO — a record no one else so far in the history of Maths Olympiads in India has broken. After receiving a BTech degree from IIT Madras, he obtained a PhD from Purdue University, US and is currently a faculty in Mathematics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
Explaining how he tackled the challenge that the Olympiad posed, Sandeep says, “The problems (questions) at the Olympiad were of the Pre-Univeristy syllabus. We did not have a very clear idea about them. When I approached Professor Vijayakumar, he asked me to go through the previous years’ papers. I gathered them all and prepared for the test. He trained us the right way. Since then, Maths has been a familiar subject.”
Several other students who participated in the Olympiads are continuing their research in maths-related topics in IT and Computer science. They include Amal Ekbal who after completing BTech from IITM, a PhD from Stanford University, US is now working in a multinational research company; K Subrahmanyam is now in IIT Hyderabad, Sujith Vijay who after getting a PhD from Rutgers University, US, is now in the maths dept of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Thiruvananthapuram, Krishnaram, after completing BTech, took a PhD from Stanford and is now working as a research consultant abroad, Aditya Aravind, who secured the first rank at RMO-2004, after doing a BTech from IIT-M is currently a doctoral student of Physics at Texas University, US.
Vineeth Varma, the first-rank holder of RMO-2003, after doing a Bachelor’s in Physics from Chennai Mathematical Institute, earned his PhD from France and is now working as a research consultant. TV Raziman, the first-rank holder from RMO-2006, after doing an MSc from IIT Kanpur, completed a PhD in Nano Photonics from EPFL, Switzerland.
“I was part of the Regional Maths Olympiad in 1995. I was as one of the top 30 in the Indian National Maths Olympiad. During the camp, we met great talents in the field. Experts in Maths provided coaching. The exposure has helped us mould our careers” says Subrahmanyam, who is now an Assistant Professor, Computer Science Engineering, IIT, Hyderabad, who was part of RMO 2010.
“Recently, when I saw the brochure of this year’s Olympiad, I saw the different schemes and scholarships made available to the winners of the Olympiad. Back then, we did not have such incentives. In fact, we became aware of such tests only if a teacher in our college told us about it,” he added.
Speaking about the positive influence of taking part in an Olympiad, V Viswajith, final year student, B Tech Computer Science, IIT Madras, says, “Engineering is a kind of applied Maths. Most of my classmates at IIT are Regional Olympiad winners. Events like Olympiad help you realise how good you are. It lays a foundation for your career in the field of Maths.”
“To receive a PhD in Maths is difficult. Even more difficult it is to make an impact with ground breaking research in the field. Globally, it is a very competitive field,” he adds.
Subhash Khot, currently with Courant Institute, US, who was awarded the Rolf Nevalinna prize for his contributions to the mathematical aspects of information sciences, at the recently concluded International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Seoul, S Korea, was a silver medalist at the IMO held in 1994 and 1995. He completed his BTech from IIT Bombay. Incidentally, ICM is the most prestigious assembly of about 5,000 mathematicians where the Fields Medal — popularly known as the Maths Nobel prize — is awarded. Fields Medalist Manjul Bhargava is also an Olympiad winner.
International talents
Terence Tao, now in University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), US who was a Fields Medalist in 2006 had won a bronze, silver and a gold at the IMOs held in 1986, 87 and 88 respectively. He won the gold medal at the age of 13, becoming the youngest person to achieve that.
In spite of several talents blooming out of the Regional Mathematical Olympiad, so far not a single student from Kerala has qualified for entry into the Indian team. Professor Vijayakumar says the reason for this, in a way, is lack of awareness.” Students are not opting for a career in Maths or basic Sciences mainly due to social pressure. Thus, though students of Kerala perform very well in the Regional Mathematics Olympiad, their performance at the INMO has been quite bad in the recent years. The main reason is that they are not aware of the opportunities in and the excitement about pursuing a science career.”
Parents are the ones who need to be made aware, opines Prof Vijaykumar. “Even educated parents do not know what you can do with a Maths degree. This is because of much and undeserving publicity given to engineering courses. Like national research institutions, some of our universities should come forward to admit good engineering graduates to Masters programmes in Mathematics. A right combination of Maths and Engineering would mould a good researcher in applied areas like networking, space science, information sciences and computational biology,” he explains.
Speaking about the success of India’s Mars Orbital Mission, Mangalyaan, the professor highlights the importance of Mathematics.” Not many are aware of the Maths behind Mangalyaan or similar space missions. The underlying Maths is just college-level Maths called theory of finite fields, and the branch of study is coding theory. Mathematical Theory of Communication described by Shannon, Hamming etc are basics of any Electronics Engineering curriculum and need an in-depth study. Thus, basic science studies/research has to be encouraged in all major, promising universities. A revolutionary approach in higher education is the need of the hour,” he says.
Professor A Vijayakumar’s point of view
“Recently, MHRD has suggested that teacher training programmes be made a part of universities. As a person interested in Maths education, I strongly endorse this idea. In fact, in many internationally acclaimed universities in the rest of the world, the Maths education department is in the university’s research campus. This will help the educators have a close link with the researchers in their fields of study. Also, teachers should have a thorough knowledge of current developments in the field too. This will help achieve continuity in the syllabus and in the courses offered. In the US, there are two Maths professional bodies, American Mathematical Society, which takes care of high-end research, and Maths Association of America, which takes care of Maths education. They jointly organise some workshops. Such a system will strengthen the teaching of Mathematics in schools/colleges.”
Apart from activities associated with the Maths Olympiad, Professor Vijayakumar’s research areas include Discrete Mathematics - Graph Theory, Network Modeling and Mathematical Chemistry. He has also travelled to Hungary, Italy, Czeh Republic, Spain, Mexico, Korea and Taiwan for delivering lectures at international conferences. Every time he visits a place, he makes it a point to visit schools as well, to know how Maths is taught there. He is also a mentor for the INSPIRE (Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research) programme of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, which, according to their website hopes “to communicate to the youth of the country the excitements of creative pursuit of science, attract talent to the study of science at an early age and thus build the required critical human resource pool for strengthening and expanding the Science and Technology system and Research and Development base.
revathi@newindianexpress.com