Student wins Cambridge University Mathematics Project Prize
Posted on Tuesday 16 June 2009
First year student, Surein Aziz, submits prize-winning essay on Beauty in Mathematics
Student wins essay competition on Beauty in Mathematics
When 17 year old Surein Aziz of Blackwater was told of an international competition organised by Cambridge University to write about mathematics, little did he think he would win first prize! Surein who is taking A levels in Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Philosophy, as well as AS computing, at Farnborough Sixth Form College, was told about the competition by his mathematics teacher, Melody James, and he decided to try to explain the nature of Beauty in Mathematics.
Surein explained that sometimes he thinks of mathematics as a dense, never-ending jungle in which it is possible to hack away and never get anywhere. “But then you stop and see huge numbers of incredible, exotic plants and animals to marvel at – and every so often huge new swathes of jungle are found to explore, and that is really exciting,”, Surein said.
Surein based his essay on the elegant proof known as Euler’s Identity, in which complex mathematics suddenly reveals the most beautiful theorem.
Surein said, “Unlike art, where beauty is created by the artist, in mathematics the beauty is inherent and just waiting to be discovered.”
Melody James, his maths tutor at the College, said, “ Surein wrote his essay alone and I didn’t even know that he had entered it until he emailed me to say he had won!”
She added, “It is a fantastic achievement to write something which will appear alongside the work of some of the world’s most brilliant mathematicians – and I hope it will be the first of many articles on Mathematics which Surein will write in his career.
Surein hopes to go on to university to study mathematics and he would like to undertake research for a Ph.D. He said, “I was quite surprised to hear that I had won because I was writing about something that I find special in mathematics – I didn’t think it could possibly win a competition!”
Click here for a copy of Surein's article (pdf)
