Reid W. Barton

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Reid W. Barton is currently a graduate student at Harvard University in mathematics, an MIT alumni, and one of the all-time greatest performers in the International Science Olympiads.^{[citation needed]}

Biography

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Barton is the son of two environmental engineers. His abilities were evident from an early age, being tutored in game theory by a computer science graduate student in grade three, and obtaining the maximum score of 5 on the AP Calculus examination while 10 years old. Officially homeschooled since third grade, Barton took part time classes at Tufts University, in chemistry (5th grade), physics (6th grade), and subsequently Swedish, Finnish, French, and Chinese. Working part-time with MIT computer scientist Charles E. Leiserson since eighth grade, he honed his abilities on CilkChess, one of the top computer chess programs at the time.

Mathematical competitions

Barton was the first student to ever win four gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad^[1], culminating in full-marks at the 2001 Olympiad held in Washington, D.C., shared only with Gabriel Carroll, Xiao Liang and Zhang Zhiqiang.^[2]

Barton has earned a place among the five top ranked competitors (who are themselves not ranked against each other) in the William Lowell Putnam Competition four times (2001–2004)^{[citation needed]}, a feat matched by six others (Don Coppersmith (1968–71), Arthur Rubin (1970–73), Bjorn M. Poonen (1985–88), Ravi D. Vakil (1988–91), Gabriel D. Carroll (2000–03), Daniel Kane (2003-06)), being on the MIT team for the duration, earning the school a second place finish 2001, and two first placements (2003, 2004).^{[citation needed]} He has won the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student awarded jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America for his work on packing densities.^{[citation needed]}

According to Richard Stanley, the first time Barton participated in Putnam Competition was in 2000 when he was still a high-school senior. Stanley himself graded the solutions and says that Barton solved every single problem correctly. Of course, these results remain unofficial — otherwise Barton would be a five time Putnam winner (if this were allowed—notably fellow high school senior Gabriel Carroll submitted an official top-five entry on the same exam in 2000 and used up one of his four chances to go head-to-head with Reid in college).^{[citation needed]} Reid Barton graduated recently from MIT and is now a graduate student at Harvard.^{[citation needed]}

Other achievements

Barton has also performed well in programming. He has earned two gold medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics, earning a first place finish in 2001 , with 580 points out of 600, 55 ahead of his nearest competitor.^[3] He has been on the 2nd and 5th place MIT team at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, and reached the finals in the TopCoder Open (2004) ,semi-finals (2003,2006) , the TopCoder Collegiate Challenge (2004),semi-finals (2006),TCCC Regional finals (2002),and TopCoder Invitational semi-finalis(2002).^{[citation needed]}

Barton has a degree of skill in music, playing the piano and the cello with proficiency.^{[citation needed]} He has taught for many summers at various academic olympiad training programs, such as the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program, teaching high schoolers the ropes. ^[4]

Notes

Bibliography

• Reid Barton, Packing densities of patterns, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 11(1) R80 2004

External links

• Reid Barton's Harvard Math page
• Reid Barton's MIT Public Directory
• Science Magazine's Article: IMO's Golden Boy Makes Perfection Look Easy
• Citation by the American Mathematical Society for Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate