The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is held annually, hosted in a different country each year, over the space of two days. Each day candidates sit a 4.5 hour paper of 3 questions. It began in 1959 and the UK has competed since 1967.
To research Oundle’s connection to the IMO, I worked with Mrs Langsdale, the School Archivist, who helped me find articles and get in contact with Mr Atkins, Head of Maths at Oundle from 1991 to 2008, and teacher until 2018.
He said: “They try to set very difficult problems that demand depth of thinking but are based on school maths. A good IMO question is one where most students don’t have a clue where to start and spend an hour considering it and trying to find a way in, and then of course they have a knowledge of various mathematical methods to help them.”
Mr Atkins was also involved in UK IMO team since the success of his pupil at Oundle, Michael Ching (C 97), who achieved a gold medal in 1996 and a silver in 1997 and has gone on to become a professor of mathematics at Amherst College in America. He is among two Oundle pupils to have ever competed including Simon Yun- Farmbrough (B 76) who achieved a silver in 1976. Due to his connection to Oundle, the final IMO training camps were held in Oundle from 2002 to 2011 where students stayed in Dryden (where Mr Atkins was a tutor during this period) for 5 days during the Summer half-term and trained in the house library.
Every morning, pupils would sit an IMO-style 4.5 hour paper and later, have sessions on standard mathematical topics with problem sets to solve following this. The camp held at Oundle was the last stage in the IMO selection process which was run by the UK Maths Trust (UKMT), beginning with the Senior Maths Challenge (SMC) which Oundle Sixth Formers participate in each year. Following this are two rounds of the British Maths Olympiad, featuring proof-based questions requiring written solutions rather than the multiple-choice format of the SMC. Then, around 20 pupils are selected for a training camp at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the Easter holidays and only then do eight pupils progress onto the Oundle camp (or equivalent). This is the point holding the most significance in the process, where the final team is chosen.
Mr Atkins reflects on how incredible it is that Oundle has been involved so closely in this process and holds such significance in the mathematical community. At the team celebration, members “would speak about the training camps at Trinity College, Cambridge and Oundle School in the same breath. Given that Trinity is a Mecca of Mathematics, it was great to hear the name of Oundle being quoted as well in front of the great and the good of the mathematical and scientific world.”
A documentary Beautiful Young Minds was made by the BBC, following the UK team during their preparation for the 2006 IMO. This features footage of Oundle town and School. It also went on to inspire a film called X+Y starring Asa Butterfield which focuses on a character based on one of the members of the 2006 team.
