Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics

src: www.hampshire.edu

The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) is an American residential program for mathematically talented high school students. The program has been conducted each summer since 1971, with the exceptions of 1981 and 1996, and has more than 1500 alumni.

The program was created and is still headed by Professor David C. Kelly.

Video Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics

Background

The program is housed at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and generally runs for six weeks from early July until mid-August. The program itself consists of lectures, study sessions, math workshops (general-knowledge classes), maxi-courses (three-week classes run by the senior staff members), and mini-courses (specialized shorter classes).

On a typical day, students spend four hours in the morning in class, have lunch together with the faculty, and then have several hours to use at their leisure. During this "down time" students and faculty members often host quasis, where they participate in an activity as a small group, such as juggling or making sushi. They return for the "Prime Time Theorem" (an hour-long talk on an interesting piece of mathematics given by a faculty member or a visitor), have dinner, and then spend three hours in a problem solving session. One of the instructors blogged the content of her class.

Many students go on to professional careers in mathematics. An occasional publication has resulted from work done at the program. Well-known alumni of the program include two MacArthur Fellows, Eric Lander and Erik Winfree, as well as Lisa Randall, Dana Randall, and Eugene Volokh. Many alumni return to the campus for a few days around Yellow Pig's Day (July 17) of each year. This observance was formalized for 2006 in "Yellow Pig Math Days," which was conducted in observance of 2006 being the 34th offering of the HCSSiM Program (34 being a multiple of 17). Many participants develop a yearning passion for the number 17 and yellow pigs.

The Summer Studies has been funded in the past by the American Mathematical Society and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Maps Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics

Notable alumni

• Toby Ayer, Rhodes scholar and lecturer at MIT
• Bram Cohen, developer of BitTorrent
• Matthew Cook, group leader at the Institute for Neuroinformatics at ETH Zurich and computer scientist who proved the Turing universality of Wolfram's Rule 110 cellular automaton
• Alan Edelman, professor of mathematics at MIT
• Neil Immerman, professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Susan Landau, professor of social science and policy studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Eric Lander, professor of biology at MIT and science advisor to President Barack Obama
• Cathy O'Neil, data scientist and blogger at Mathbabe.
• Lisa Randall, professor of theoretical physics at Harvard
• Seth Schoen, technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Eugene Volokh, professor of law at UCLA
• Erik Winfree, professor of computer science and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology

src: hcssim.org

References

src: www.hampshire.edu

See also

• Michael Spivak

src: www.internationalacac.org

External links

• HCSSiM Homepage

Source of article : Wikipedia