The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) 2024 results have been announced, with the United States team securing first place, two points ahead of China. This breaks China's five-year winning streak at the IMO.
The 65th IMO saw the United States score 192 points to claim the top spot, while China finished second with 190 points. Notably, India reached fourth place for the first time.
Both the Chinese and American teams won 5 gold medals and 1 silver medal each. The IMO is the world's most prestigious high school mathematics competition, attracting top young mathematicians from around the globe. This year, 609 students from 108 countries and regions participated.
Haojia Shi from the Chinese team achieved a perfect individual score for the second consecutive year, becoming only the 7th person in history to do so. American team members Alexander Wang and Jessica Wan ranked third and fifth individually, respectively.
The 2024 U.S. IMO team members are:
- Jordan Lefkowitz, 17 (Connecticut)
- Krishna Pothapragada, 18 (Illinois)
- Jessica Wan, 18 (Florida)
- Alexander Wang, 16 (New Jersey)
- Qiao (Tiger) Zhang, 16 (California)
- Linus Tang, 18 (California)
Jessica Wan is the first female to join the U.S. IMO team since 2007. She has previously won the MIT Math Prize for Girls (MP4G) competition three times consecutively and participated in the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO) for four years, winning twice.
Alexander Wang, a high school freshman from New Jersey, has been passionate about mathematics since kindergarten. He co-founded a non-profit organization called Impact Learners to help students learn and enjoy mathematics.
Linus Tang, studying online at Davidson Academy in Nevada, won first place in combinatorics at the Stanford Math Tournament in 2021. He began winning math awards as early as age one.
John Berman, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Virginia, led the U.S. IMO team this year. He replaced Po-Shen Loh, who had led the team since 2014 and guided them to gold medals in 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019.
The IMO 2024 consisted of six problems to be solved over nine hours. Interestingly, even the most advanced language models, including GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, failed to solve the first problem, which is typically considered the easiest and usually solved by human contestants within 60 minutes.
Problem 1 analysis Problem 2 analysis Problem 3 analysis Problem 4 analysis Problem 5 analysis Problem 6 analysis