FITCHBURG — Fitchburg State University recently hosted its 40th Elizabeth Haskins Mathematics Contest, welcoming 75 students from five regional high schools. The event is named for Elizabeth Haskins, a Fitchburg State Mathematics professor who retired in 1978 and died in 2004.
The competition, which was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic, was run virtually this year.
Faculty members Rachael Norton and Peter Stabb organized the event, which assembled 75 students from Narragansett Regional High School in Baldwinville, Groton-Dunstable Regional High School, the Bromfield School in Harvard, Notre Dame Preparatory School in Fitchburg, and Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School in Fitchburg.
Beyond the mathematics test, other activities for participating students included a solutions session presented by FSU Mathematics majors Brittany Kaldis and Maggie Chase, and a presentation on knot theory titled “Why Knot” by Colin Adams from Williams College.
The following students received the highest marks in the competition.
Grade 10: 1st place, Oliver Erz (Groton-Dunstable); 2nd place, Ro Dudevoir (Groton-Dunstable); 3rd place, Arushi Chaudhary (Groton-Dunstable); honorable mention, Emma Milano (Groton-Dunstable) and Prachi Hemmige (Groton-Dunstable).
Grade 11: 1st place, Tiana Jiang (Bromfield); 2nd place, Sylvia Han (Groton-Dunstable); 3rd place, Declan Muir (Groton-Dunstable); honorable mention, Ethan Kritzer (Groton-Dunstable); Jason Huang (Groton-Dunstable); Thomas Onishi (Groton-Dunstable); Matthew Hughes (Narragansett); and Olivia Ren (Bromfield).
Grade 12: 1st place, Nicholas Thornton (Bromfield), who with a perfect score of 30 points was the overall winner of the 2021 contest, and was also the top scorer in the 2019 competition; 2nd place, Ben Furman (Groton-Dunstable); 3rd place, Olivier Bradley (Bromfield).
