Newfoundland woman writing world's hardest math test
Leah Genge of St. John's is spending her Saturday writing the world's hardest math test.
"I always had a picture of the kinds of people who would go to these kinds of competitions and who would do really well," said Genge, a fourth-year mathematics student at Memorial University. "I never saw myself in that picture."
Known as the Putnam, the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition is said to be the most difficult and prestigious math competition in the world. The top prize is a full scholarship for graduate studies at Harvard University.
"I don't exactly want to write it," she said, laughing. Fair enough: the test is six hours long and consists of 12 gruelling problems. The median score is often zero and many students walk out before the time is up.
John Nash, subject of the film A Beautiful Mind, wrote the test twice and couldn't crack the top five.
The Putnam regularly attracts more than 4,000 undergraduate students from Canada and the United States.
Genge will be one of a small number of women who compete. In the competition's 89-year history, just three women have won.
Low expectations
Though competitions are a regular part of school for promising young mathematicians, Saturday's Putnam will only be Genge's second math competition. Her first was the Science Atlantic Mathematics Competition this October. She and her teammate Noah MacAulay took home the grand prize.
Growing up in St. John's, Genge loved math and excelled in the subject, but had a tough time finding the confidence to recognize her ability.
"If you ever asked me, 'Are you good at math?' I'd never say yes," she said.
.She said she feels people don't expect someone like her to be good at math and she was certainly never asked to write any math competitions
"In my case, it had to do with my gender and also my socioeconomic background," she said. "I came from a lower-income family growing up and that was known by my peers. It wasn't expected that I would ever do well."
"Because other people didn't expect it, I felt like I had to find reasons why I was doing well in math, but those reasons were never because I was good at math."
'It's an interesting challenge'
Genge thinks her struggles with confidence are common for women in the field.
"If you look around at people who are getting awards and getting acknowledged, there's something in common: they're all men," she said. "When the most brilliant minds and most talented people in a subject area always have a certain gender, you naturally concede to the fact that maybe it's a factor."
When Genge was asked by one of her professors to sign up for the Putnam after her win at Science Atlantic, she was still hesitant, refusing because she was worried about her abilities.
But the professor put her name on the list, so she started attending practice sessions. And though Genge describes what's coming as "the most painful six hours," she's keeping a positive outlook.
"Who knows? ... It's an interesting challenge. Sometimes you find you stand on a more level playing field with everyone else than you thought."
It's easy to find debates about whether competitions like the Putnam are any good at finding math's next bright stars. Now that she's had some experience, Genge thinks they've got merit.
"These competitions encourage young scientists to understand there isn't only a systematic way of answering questions," she said. "You can be creative, you can rely on your intuition."
Genge sees creativity, good intuition and the ability to see complex problems in different ways as essential tools for someone who's good at math.
"And I am good at math," she said, laughing. "But it's still hard for me to say that."
