Mathematical Gold Medal for Hanks

Concord Form 5 (Y11) student Hanks has come joint top in the whole country, one of only four participants to score a perfect 100% in the British Mathematical Olympiad (BMO). Hanks was awarded a highly prestigious Gold medal for his performance. Gold medals in BMO are reserved for the top 20 students in the country. Hanks’s achievements are all the more remarkable considering his relatively young age, the BMO is for students up to the end of sixth form (Y13), so he will have two more years of being eligible to compete.

The Olympiad is a follow-on competition to the Senior Mathematical Challenge (SMC), and only the top scoring students nationally are invited to compete. Hanks again scored a perfect 100% in the SMC winning a gold certificate and was invited to enter the BMO. Concord students were awarded an impressive total of 55 gold certificates in this year’s SMC and 14 Concordians including Hanks were invited to the BMO.

This is not Hank’s first mathematical achievement. He was also awarded a Gold medal in last year’s Olympiad and has participated in other competitions, achieving Gold medals in the Hamiltonain last year, a competition for Year 10 students and also in the Informatics Olympiad, which is similar to the British Mathematics Olympiad but tests Computer Science knowledge, another area in which Hanks excels.

His success in mathematics competitions has opened some exciting opportunities for Hanks who, following his earlier gold medal, was invited to attend a training camp in Hungary last summer run by the UK Mathematics Trust. The camp gave him the opportunity to study degree level mathematical concepts and broaden his exposure to new areas of mathematics. Speaking of the camp, Hanks described the experience that it provided “I met a lot of new people and genuinely found close friends within the camp. The lectures were genuinely interesting, and some were literally university professors coming to the camp to talk about their research findings”

Hanks has been invited to other mathematical courses, such as the Trinity College Cambridge Camp, which is the team selection event for the International Mathematics Olympiad team, and could have led to an opportunity to represent the UK in an international competition. However, it clashed with the British Informatics Olympiad final (also at Trinity College), which he also qualified for.

Hanks has been a keen mathematician since he was very young and his father, seeing his enthusiasm, introduced him to more advanced mathematics whilst he was at primary school.

Dr Tom Phoenix, Concord’s Head of Maths describes Hanks as “humble and modest” and speaks highly of him saying “he is a delight to have as a member of the class. He is phenomenal mathematician with an analytical mind that is second to none. He has a real motivation to investigate and solve the most complicated of mathematical and computational problems and the skills to make real headway in this endeavour.

“He is also an inspiration to his peers and is never too busy to help his fellow students with any maths questions they might have. Concord College is proud to foster an environment where students can support and learn from each other. Hanks is currently one of the Maths mentors, who run weekly clinics for the younger year groups, sharing knowledge and inspiring them to excel in their mathematical studies.”