Putnam Competition

The Duke Putnam team finished 10th among 577 colleges and universities in the 76th W.L Putnam Mathematical Competition. The student coach of the team, Alex Milu’15, received Honorable Mention (top 2%) and Trung Can ’18 also ranked among the top 100 of the 4275 students in the US and Canada who participated. Tony Qiao ’17 and Feng Gui ’18 ranked among the top 8% and David Geng ‘19 and Justin Luo’18 also ranked among top quarter. The contest was particularly challenging this year with nearly 2/3 of the participants getting 0 points out of 120.
Alex Milu, Trung Can, Tony Qiao and Feng Gui are the winners of the Menger Award given for excellence in mathematical competitions. History and previous winners at: http://services.math.duke.edu/news/awards/menger/index.html
This was the 22st time in the past 26 years, the Duke Putnam team placed among the top ten on the WL Putnam Mathematical Competition. During this stretch, Duke achieved 3 first place finishes, 2 seconds and 6 thirds. http://services.math.duke.edu/news/awards/competitions.html#putnam
Congratulations to all who participated.