Romanian Master of Mathematics

James Aaronson (Year 13, Upper Eighth) and Sahl Khan (Year 12, Lower Eighth) are to be congratulated very warmly on their exceptional performances: James was the UK’s top competitor, missing Gold by just one mark, and Sahl came joint 3rd in the UK entry.

The UK squad was itself notably strong: three members had been in the UK IMO team last year and another served as the reserve. In the 2012 Romanian Master of Mathematics competition, the UK entry came 8th (out of 15 nations) in the team competition.

This is one of the problems that both James and Sahl solved:

Prove that there are infinitely many positive integers n
such that 2^(2^n+1) + 1 is divisible by n, but 2^n + 1 is not.

See the full set of this year’s results.

08/03/2012