A Ripon Grammar School student has achieved the highest score in Yorkshire and the Humber in a maths competition, placing him in the top 50 students nationally.
Wynn Williams, from Harrogate, was one of 1,800 students out of hundreds of thousands of entries to make it to the final round of the elite Maclaurin mathematics Olympiad.
The 16-year-old’s impressive score earned him a distinction, along with a medal, certificate and book prize.
He also received a congratulatory letter from the UK Maths Trust (UKMT), which organised the competition.
The trust’s letter commended Wynn’s ‘exceptional achievement,’ and continued:
“We are pleased that your problem-solving ability, hard work and dedication have been recognised in this way.
"We hope that your impressive personal performance will encourage you and your classmates to continue to participate in UKMT competitions."
Having achieved top marks (135/135) in the first round, the teenager went on to sit a challenging two-hour paper consisting of six problems, each requiring full written solutions, in the final.
Planning to study maths, further maths, physics and chemistry at A-level, followed by engineering at university, he said:
“I enjoy the process of working out a problem, while searching for a route to the final answer.
“The questions demanded a high level of comprehension and logical thinking and I found it challenging but was pretty delighted to find a platform to test my understanding in maths.
“I was really surprised at being the top scorer in Yorkshire and the Humber.”
The keen chess player, who also enjoys basketball and badminton, says he hopes to compete in more maths challenges in the future.
Of the 149 Year 9, 10 and 11 Ripon Grammar School pupils who entered the first stage of the intermediate UKMT competition, involving 25 multiple choice questions on problem solving and reasoning, 16 high-scoring pupils got through to the Kangaroo round, with Wynn and Ray Cho among the 1,800 students in the country selected for the Olympiad.
*The UK Mathematics Trust, founded in 1996, runs the UK’s biggest junior, intermediate and senior maths challenges, attracting more than 700,000 entries each year.
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