Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics
{{Short description|American residential program for talented high school students}}
{{primary sources|date=January 2014}}
The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) is an American residential program for mathematically talented high school students. The program has been conducted each summer since 1971, with the exceptions of 1981 and 1996, and has more than 1500 alumni.{{cite web | url=http://www.hcssim.org/faq.html | title=HCSSiM home page, Frequently and Less Frequently Asked Questions with Frequent Answers | access-date=2008-04-14 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080306171311/http://www.hcssim.org/faq.html | archive-date=2008-03-06 | url-status=dead }}{{cite news | first=Laura A. | last=Haight | title=Hamming It Up At Hampshire: Mathematics Gone Hogwild | work=Harvard Crimson | date=1982-02-05 | url=https://api.thecrimson.com/article/1982/2/5/hamming-it-up-at-hampshire-pisaturday/ | access-date=2022-07-19}} Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Summer Studies ran online for a shortened program of four weeks.
The program was created and is still headed by David Kelly, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Hampshire College.
Background
The program is housed at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and generally runs for six weeks from early July until mid-August. The program itself consists of lectures, study sessions, math workshops (general-knowledge classes), maxi-courses (three-week classes run by the senior staff members), and mini-courses (specialized shorter classes).
On a typical day, students spend four hours in the morning in class, have lunch together with the faculty, and then have several hours to use at their leisure. During this "down time" students and faculty members often host quasis, where they participate in an activity as a small group, such as juggling or making sushi. They return for the "Prime Time Theorem" (an hour-long talk on an interesting piece of mathematics given by a faculty member or a visitor), have dinner, and then spend three hours in a problem solving session. One of the instructors blogged the content of her class.{{cite web | url=http://mathbabe.org/2012/07/03/hcssim-workshop-day-1/ | title=HCSSiM 2012 Blog, Day 1 | date=3 July 2012 | access-date=2013-07-17}}{{cite web | url=http://mathbabe.org/?s=hcssim | title=HCSSiM 2012 Blog, Day 17 | access-date=2013-07-17}}
Many students go on to professional careers in mathematics. An occasional publicationFor instance, {{cite magazine | doi=10.2307/2690465 | author=Joel Auslander |author2=Arthur T. Benjamin |author3=Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson | title=Optimal leapfrogging |magazine=Mathematics Magazine | volume=66 | year=1993 | issue=1 | pages=14–19 | url=http://www.math.hmc.edu/~benjamin/papers/leapfrogging.pdf | jstor=2690465}} has resulted from work done at the program. Well-known alumni of the program include two MacArthur Fellows, Eric Lander and Erik Winfree, as well as Lisa Randall, Dana Randall, and Eugene Volokh.{{cite web | url=http://www.hcssim.org/about-our-alumni.html | title=HCSSiM About our alumni | access-date=2013-07-17 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://archive.today/20120803213930/http://www.hcssim.org/about-our-alumni.html | archive-date=2012-08-03 }} Many alumni return to the campus for a few days around Yellow Pig's Day (July 17) of each year. This observance was formalized for 2006 in "Yellow Pig Math Days," which was conducted in observance of 2006 being the 34th offering of the HCSSiM Program (34 being a multiple of 17).
The Summer Studies has been funded in the past by the American Mathematical Society{{cite journal | first=Allyn | last=Jackson | title=Supporting a National Treasure | journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society |date=November 2003 | volume=50 | issue=10 |page=1221 | url=https://www.ams.org/notices/200310/commentary.pdf | access-date=2007-03-04}} and the U.S. National Science Foundation.HCSSiM received funding under the Young Scholars Program (YSP) of the Division of Research on Learning (DRL) of the NSF. The grant award numbers were [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=8855094 8855094], [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=9055090 9055090], [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=9256071 9256071], and [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=9452685 9452685].
Notable alumni
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2023}}
- Bram Cohen, developer of BitTorrent, co-founder of CodeCon
- Matthew Cook, group leader at the Institute for Neuroinformatics at ETH Zurich and computer scientist who proved the Turing universality of Wolfram's Rule 110 cellular automaton
- Lenore Cowen, computer scientist and mathematician at Tufts University
- Alan Edelman, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan Fellow
- Alan Grayson, former member of the U.S House of Representatives for Florida's 8th and 9th Congressional Districts
- Neil Immerman, professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Guggenheim Fellow
- Susan Landau, professor of social science and policy studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Guggenheim Fellow
- Eric Lander, professor of biology at MIT and science advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, MacArthur Fellow and Rhodes Scholar
- Adam Marcus, professor of mathematics at Princeton University
- Cathy O'Neil, data scientist, author, and blogger at [https://mathbabe.org/ Mathbabe]
- Jim Propp, professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell
- Lisa Randall, professor of theoretical physics at Harvard University
- Seth Schoen, technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, author of the DeCSS haiku
- Steven Strogatz, Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University
- Eugene Volokh,{{cite web | url=http://www.hcssim.org/about-our-alumni.html | title=HCSSiM About our alumni | access-date=2008-05-03 | archive-url=https://archive.today/20120803213930/http://www.hcssim.org/about-our-alumni.html | archive-date=2012-08-03 }} Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law,
- Erik Winfree, professor of computer science and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.hcssim.org HCSSiM Homepage]
{{Hampshire College}}