Ellington

Senior William Johnson didn’t expect to beat his sixth-place score from last year in a national math competition, but he recently became the first UW student to win the competition since it began 72 years ago.

Johnson competed in the William Lowell Putnam Competition in December 2008 and came out sixth in the nation. The fact that he almost placed in the top five the first time was what drove him to compete again.

Johnson was announced as one of the five winners of the competition in late March. The competition was held the first weekend of December, and each winner receives an award of $2,500 and rights to the Putnam Fellow title.

“I found out that I was one of the winners right before spring break,” Johnson said.

The competition consists of two three-hour sessions. Each problem is two to three lines long, and competitors are given two to three pages to write out their proofs. The problems are designed with tricks to solving them.

“Each problem has things that you wouldn’t think of,” Johnson said. “It’s not like you sit down and solve them; you have to think about them.”

Julia Pevtsova, assistant math professor at the UW, said that Johnson is an exceptional student. Pevtsova saw that Johnson had unique qualities that would help him through the competition.

“He has a very inquisitive mind and asks very unexpected and intelligent questions,” she said. “He made sure he kept on top of challenging problems. He knows all of the stuff and is very creative mathematically, which is a very important quality.”

Johnson began taking American Mathematics Competition tests in high school, which was where he learned about the Putnam competition.

“I heard that the Putnam competition was the college equivalent [of those tests], and in my second year of college, they announced in class that they have prep sessions, so I went to those,” Johnson said.

Ioana Dumitriu, another assistant math professor, worked with Johnson in these study sessions.

“Last year, we had weekly preparatory sessions where we had a bunch of undergraduates come and sit down, and we proposed problems for them to solve,” Dumitriu said. “The problems are similar to what you would get in the Putnam competition. He started coming to them, and when he started opening his mouth, we thought we had struck gold.”

Dumitriu believes that Johnson’s fearlessness and quick mind, along with his previous mathematical training, enables Johnson to be successful in competitions. Johnson said that his interest in math came from reading math books, and from his teachers and parents, who encouraged him to pursue the subject.

However, the competition was not simple for Johnson. While he had momentum from doing so well the year before, he did struggle at one point.

“The most challenging part for me was the problem I didn’t solve,” Johnson said. “I don’t think I would have solved it if I had more time. The solutions I found online were so random, I don’t think I would have thought of them at all.”

Johnson is happy he won this year and admits that he thought his sixth-place success in the first competition was a fluke. He said that, in these types of competitions, he does worse the second time.

Dumitriu, however, believes Johnson has the skills and mindset to succeed.

“He has a desire to learn very many things and an interest in mathematics that is very rare,” Dumitriu said. “In our case, we don’t get a student like that too often.”

Reach reporter Mary Jean Spadafora at news@dailyuw.com.