William Lowell Putnam Mathematical

Competition
The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to the Putnam Competition,
is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate
college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regardless of the
students nationalities). It awards a scholarship and cash
prizes ranging from $250 to $2,500 for the top students
and $5,000 to $25,000 for the top schools, plus one of
the top ve individual scorers (designated as Putnam Fellows) gets graduate tuition waived at Harvard (Putnam
Fellow Prize Fellowship), and the top 100 individual scorers have their names mentioned in the American Mathematical Monthly's October issue (alphabetically ordered
within rank). It is widely considered to be the most prestigious university-level mathematics examination in the
world, and its diculty is such that the median score is
often zero or one (out of 120) despite being attempted by
students specializing in mathematics.

points, and 42 points was sucient to make the top percentile.

At a participating college, any student who wishes to take
part in the exam may compete (limited by the number of
exams a school receives); but the schools ocial team
consists of three individuals whom it designates in advance. A teams score is the sum of the ranks of its three
team members, with the lowest cumulative rank winning.
It is entirely possible, even commonplace at some institutions, for the eventual results to show that the wrong
team was pickedi.e. that some students not on the ocial team outscored an ocial team member. For example, in 2010, MIT had two of the top ve scorers on the
examination and seven of the top 24, while Caltech had
just one student in the top ve and only four in the top 24;
yet Caltech took rst place among teams while MIT took
second.
The top ve teams win $25,000, $20,000, $15,000,
$10,000, and $5,000, in that order, with team members
receiving $1,000, $800, $600, $400, and $200, respectively.

The competition was founded in 1927 by Elizabeth Lowell Putnam in memory of her husband William Lowell
Putnam, who was an advocate of intercollegiate intellectual competition. The exam has been oered annually
since 1938 and is administered by the Mathematical Association of America.

The top ve individual scorers are named Putnam Fellows and awarded $2,500. One of them is also awarded
the William Lowell Putnam Prize Scholarship of $12,000
plus tuition for graduate study at Harvard University.
Sixth through 15th place individuals receive $1,000 and
the next ten receive $250. The names of the top 100
students are published in the American Mathematical
Monthly. Many Putnam Fellows have gone on to become
distinguished researchers in mathematics and other elds,
including three Fields MedalistsMilnor, Mumford, and
Quillenand two Nobel laureates in physicsFeynman
and Wilson.[1]

Competition layout

The Putnam competition now takes place on the rst Saturday in December, and consists of two three-hour sittings separated by a lunch break. The test is supervised
by faculty members at the participating schools. Each
competitor attempts to solve twelve problems, which can
typically be solved with only basic knowledge of college
mathematics but which require extensive creative thinking.

2 Winners

Each of the twelve questions is worth 10 points, and the

most frequent scores above zero are 10 points for a complete solution, 9 points for a nearly complete solution, and
1 point for the beginnings of a solution. In earlier years,
the twelve questions were worth one point each, with no
partial credit given. The examination is considered to be
very dicult: it is typically attempted by students specializing in mathematics, but the median score is usually
zero or one point out of 120 possible, and there have been
only four perfect scores as of 2010. In 2003, of the 3,615
students taking the exam, 1024 (28%) scored 10 or more

2.1 Top-scoring teams

2.2 Teams ranked by historical performance
Below is a table of teams by the number of appearances
in the top ve and number of titles.
The following table lists Teams nishing in Top Five (as
of 2015 competition):
1

For a recent analysis, the following table lists teams that

nished in the top ve since 2000 (as of 2015 competition):
The following table lists Teams with First place nishes
(as of 2015 competition):

2.3

Putnam Fellows

Since the rst competition, the top ve (or six, in case of

a tie) scorers on the examination have been named Putnam Fellows. Within the top ve, Putnam Fellows are
not ranked. Students are not allowed to participate in the
Putnam Competition more than four times. For example,
if a high school senior chooses to ocially participate,
he/she eectively chooses to forfeit one of his/her years
of eligibility in college (see Gabriel D. Carroll). This
makes it even more of a remarkable feat to become a
Putnam Fellow four times. In the history of Competition, only eight students have been Putnam Fellows four
times, with twenty others winning the award three times.
The following table lists these students:
The following table lists all Putnam fellows from 1938 to
present, with the years they placed in the top ve.

2.4

Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Award winners

Since 1992, the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Award has

been available to be awarded to a female participant with
a high score. The year(s) in which they were Fellows are
in bold.

Notes

[1] Gallian 2004

References
Gallian, Joseph A. (October 2004), The First
sixty-six years of the Putnam competition,
American Mathematical Monthly 111: 691699,
doi:10.2307/4145042, retrieved 21 November
2012

External links
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
ocial site
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
results

EXTERNAL LINKS

William Lowell Putnam Competition problems, solutions, and results archive

Archive of Putnam Problems and Student Solutions
Archive of Problems 1938-2003
The Harvard-United States Military Academy
Mathematics Competition of 1933: Genesis of the
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
Searchable data base for information about careers
of Putnam Fellows
A comprehensive history of the Putnam competition. An electronic update of Gallians 2004 paper.

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1

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William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_

Competition?oldid=714173937 Contributors: Michael Hardy, Isomorphic, Stan Shebs, Evercat, Charles Matthews, EmphasisMine,
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