William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students awarding scholarships and cash prizes ranging from $25,000 to $5,000. The competition was funded in 1927 by Elizabeth Lowell Putnam in memory of her husband William Lowell Putnam (Harvard 1882), who while alive had been an advocate of intercollegiate intellectual competition. The exam has been offered annually since 1938 and administered by the Mathematical Association of America.The Putnam competition takes place on an early Saturday in December, consisting of two three-hour sittings with a lunch break. The twelve problems, all mathematical proofs, can usually be solved with only basic knowledge of college mathematics but will require extensive creative thinking and completely stump even most students in college specializing in mathematics. Cleverness, insight, and quick thinking are needed. As an indication of the difficulty of the exam, the exam is graded out of 120 possible points; the average score of contestants on the exam is only 1.
Many contestants have gone on to become distinguished researchers in mathematics and other fields. A number of them have received the Fields Medal or the Nobel Prize in Physics.