Putnam Club

About Us

The purpose of the Putnam Club is to develop students' problem-solving skills and to prepare them for competitions such as the CUNY Math Challenge, the Mathematics Department's annual Prize Examinations, and the prestigious Putnam Competition (a competition that includes most colleges from the United States and Canada).

Faculty Advisers

David Aulicino, Associate Professor
Heidi Goodson, Assistant Professor

How to Join / Contact Us

If you would like to join the Putnam Club or to find out more information about the club, e-mail David Aulicino or Heidi Goodson.

Meetings

The Putnam Club will have informal discussions of challenging problems on Zoom and Slack (please e-mail the advisers to gain access to the site). Students are welcome to participate in the discussions even if they do not wish to participate in any competitions.

You may join the Putnam Club at any point in the semester. We will post a list of initial problems to consider by October 11.

About the Putnam Competition

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition began in 1938 as a competition between mathematics departments at colleges and universities. Now the competition has grown to be the preeminent undergraduate mathematics competition in the United States and Canada as well as the leading university-level mathematics exam in the world. Each year, on the first Saturday in December, more than 4,000 students spend two three-hour sessions solving 12 challenging mathematical problems. Prizes are awarded to the participants with the highest scores and to the departments of mathematics of the five institutions whose teams obtain the highest rankings. Cash prizes for the top five teams range from $25,000 to $5,000. Cash prizes for the top five students, honored as Putnam Fellows, are $2,500 each; other top students also receive prizes for their performance on the Putnam Mathematical Competition.

The Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize was established in 1992 to be "awarded periodically to a woman whose performance on the Competition has been deemed particularly meritorious." Recent winners of the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize have received $1,000.

Over the years many of the winners of the Putnam competition have become distinguished mathematicians. A number of them have received the Fields Medal and several have won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Announcements

2022 Mathematics Prize Examination

The Junior and Senior Prize Examinations will be given by the Mathematics Department on Friday, February 25, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m in Ingersoll 1146. The Senior Prize Examination is open to any Brooklyn College undergraduate in the day or evening session. The Junior Prize Examination is open to any Brooklyn College undergraduate who did not receive credit for Calculus 2 (Mathematics 1206) or the equivalent earlier than the spring semester of 2021; this examination does not normally require knowledge of \advanced" topics.

Prizes are awarded as follows:

Milton Abramowitz Award ($200): to the best paper of the Senior Prize Examination, provided that at least one paper is considered worthy of an award.
Department of Mathematics Awards (amount varies): to other highscoring contestants, if any, on both examinations.

Recent examinations are posted on the Web site - http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~mate/prize/

Scores of 20 or more (based on 10 points per problem) are usually sufficient to win awards. There is no penalty for doing badly; only names of award winners are revealed to the department. All interested students who think they can solve at least one problem are encouraged to compete.

If you wish to take either examination, please sign up by the end of Friday, February 18 by sending an e-mail to Professor Benes at CBenes@brooklyn.cuny.edu stating whether you are registering for the Junior or Senior Prize Examination. Signing up does not obligate you to participate in any way.