Great Scot September 2019 Great Scot 157_September 2019_ONLINE | Page 27

SCOTCH BOYS
BRING HOME
THE MEDALS IN
INTERNATIONAL
OLYMPIADS
Congratulations to William Sutherland
(Year 12) and Andres Buritica Monroy (Year
10), who took to the world stage in July and
did Australia proud in separate International
Olympiads, coming away with bronze
medals in their respective fields of physics
and mathematics when ranged against
international students of the highest calibre.
William Sutherland wrote: ‘The 2019
International Physics Olympiad was the
culmination of three different levels of
competition: competing with 1700 bright
Physics students for the 24 spots at the
summer school, then for the eight spots for
the Australian Asian Physics Olympiad team,
and finally for the five spots in the Australian
International Physics Olympiad Team.
‘This year’s Olympiad was held in Tel
Aviv, Israel, and individual competitors within
the Australian team took home one silver
medal and four bronze medals. I was proud
to achieve a bronze medal, earning me a
placement of 119 out of the 364 participants
and second in Australia.
‘The competition was held between
7 and 15 July, but only two half days were
dedicated to the actual physics exams. The
remainder of the time in Israel was primarily
spent touring places such as the Dead Sea
and Jerusalem, and doing activities such
as safecracking and rafting down the
Jordan River.
‘It truly was one of the greatest
experiences of my life to face the incredibly
challenging problems of the competition and
meet like-minded but diverse people from all
over the world.’
Head of Mathematics, Dr Gareth
Ainsworth, describes Andres Buritica
Monroy’s brilliant performance: ‘The
International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO),
held this year in Bath, England during July,
is the most prestigious and intellectually
demanding mathematics competition for
high school students in the world. It sees
each country send their six finest young
mathematicians to compete over two days.
Each day the students tackle three fiendishly
difficult problems over four and a half hours.
‘Simply receiving an invitation to compete
in the IMO is an incredible achievement, as
the students are selected on the basis of
their outstanding performance in a range
of gruelling national competitions. Andres’
superb track record at such competitions
earned him a well-deserved place in the
Australian team. In the IMO, Andres secured
a bronze medal for his performance, and his
efforts contributed to the Australian team
earning an impressive 18th place overall.
(The full results and the problem sets are
accessible at www.imo-official.org.)
‘The competition motivates the training
and developing of mathematical talent,
and allows students to connect with
like-minded individuals from across the
globe. In particular, the Australian team has
a longstanding friendly rivalry with the UK
team, culminating in the Mathematical Ashes,
an annual competition between the two
teams that takes place in the days leading
up to the IMO. This year Andres and his
teammates successfully defended the title to
retain the Ashes for Australia.
‘The team also took the opportunity to
visit Oxford University, where they attended a
lecture on elliptic curves by Sir Andrew Wiles
(who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem).
‘At Scotch we aim to “remove the ceiling”
in mathematics education, to enable boys
to develop their mathematical abilities to the
highest level of which they are capable. It is
wonderful to see students scale to the very
heights and have their considerable abilities
recognised on the world stage.’
www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot
25