For the first time since 2006, Brown students placed in the top 10 at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition — one of the world’s most prestigious collegiate math contests. Bruno’s team, which finished eighth in the competition in December, consisted of An Cao ’26, Nathan Smith ’26 and Luke Choi ’25.
Established in 1938, the Putnam competition includes 12 questions and lasts six hours. Every December, the contest attracts participants from universities across the United States and Canada — and, with the introduction of a pilot program in 2024, Mexico. After the exam, each school is ranked based on its top three scorers, who are then referred to as that school’s team.
Results from the 2024 competition were released last month.
Although the Putnam is completed individually, Brown’s student competitors formed a community around preparing for the contest. Professor of Mathematics Jeremy Kahn and Assistant Professor of Mathematics Eric Larson alternated hosting weekly practices for interested students. By the time the competition rolled around, the students who consistently attended the sessions formed a “fairly small, tight-knit group,” Larson said.
In each practice session, students would work independently, then discuss their work in small groups. Finally, groups would present their solutions to the entire session, hoping to find patterns and learn from one another.
At the end of the night, “it was hard to wrap (the students) up,” Kahn said, joking that he “wanted to go home, and (the students) wanted to keep working.”
Larson, who scored in the top five on the Putnam himself as a college student, attributed the team’s success to “several years of experience with the competitions and lots of practice.”
Kahn attributed Brown’s success in the 2024 contest to the competitors’ hard work, adding that he and Larson are “just bringing people together.”
Cao, who placed in the top 100 Putnam contestants this year, began her math journey by studying logic problems with her father in elementary school.
In high school, she participated in competitions like the Vietnam Mathematical Olympiad. Cao said she enjoys how math competitions consist of “problems that require you to think outside the box” and is particularly interested in combinatorics questions.
At Brown, Cao is pursuing concentrations in math and computer science and is an active member of the math Departmental Undergraduate Group. She hopes to pursue a PhD in math.
Like Cao, Smith has always been interested in math — largely because of his sister.
“I remember she would give me lessons on advanced math at the coffee table in the living room, and I’d have no idea what’s going on,” recalled Smith, who also placed in the top 100 in the 2024 competition. For his birthday, his sister gifted him Joseph Gallian’s “Contemporary Abstract Algebra.”
He became interested in competition math through his mother, who coached his school’s team. He only decided to take the Putnam the night before the exam, when he helped Kahn move the scrap paper to the exam room for the competition.
Smith now hopes to pursue math at a graduate level, like his sister. The textbook she gifted him is still Smith’s “favorite textbook ever,” he said.
Choi, who studies math and computer science, placed in the top 200.
Choi’s love for math began in middle school, when he discovered he had a knack for the subject and decided to participate in MathCounts, a national math program for middle schoolers. “I was also really a competitive person,” Choi added.
“The way you approach problems in more competition settings is very different from how you do it in classes or research,” Choi said, recalling his excitement at solving a new kind of problem during a competition.
Unlike Cao and Smith, Choi sees math as a hobby and plans to pursue a career in software engineering. But the “rush” that he gets from solving a math problem after hours of effort still draws him to the subject, he said.
“I’ve been doing math competitions for almost 10 years,” Choi added. Because the 2024 competition was his last chance to compete in the Putnam, he thought he “might as well enjoy it.”
