About PROMYS

PROMYS is a challenging program designed to encourage ambitious high school students to explore the creative world of mathematics. Each summer, approximately 60 high school students from around the country gather on the campus of Boston University for six weeks of rigorous mathematical activity. Through their intensive efforts to solve an assortment of unusually challenging problems in Number Theory, participants will practice the art of mathematical discovery.

Students are advised by resident junior and assistant counselors who have just graduated high school, as well as college-aged counselors who are embarking on their own mathematical careers at some of our nation's finest universities (Brown, California Institute of Technology, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Rochester Institute of Technology, Stanford, SUNY Stony Brook, UC San Diego, University of Chicago, and Yale, among others). In addition, the returning students, who share dormitory rooms with the first-year students, are a constant source of helpful hints and suggestions. Senior mathematicians provide an additional resource for students by holding problem sessions for groups of 11-12 up to three times per week.

Advanced seminars and the Clay Mathematics Institute

Students who find their PROMYS experience especially worthwhile may be invited to return for a second summer to participate in the advanced PROMYS/CMI activities. To ensure that returning students and counselors find their experience intellectually stimulating, PROMYS, in partnership with the Clay Mathematics Institute, offers a variety of advanced seminars and research projects each summer. In 2006, returning students participated in seminars on Galois Theory; Geometry and Symmetry; and Combinatorics. In addition, counselors and advanced students organize their own seminars on topics of their choosing.

Goals

The PROMYS program aims to provide an environment for talented young people that will arouse their curiousity and encourage a deep personal involvement with the creative elements of mathematics and science. It is designed to encourage habits of thought that will lead to scientific independence and creativity. At the same time, it seeks to foster interaction between the PROMYS community and the larger community of research mathematicians and scientists currently working in academia and industry.

History

The PROMYS faculty is largely composed of former participants of a Secondary Science Training Program sponsored by the National Science Foundation during the sixties and seventies at the Ohio State University in Columbus. That SST program, begun by the late Arnold Ross in 1957, can proudly point to a long list of alumni who are now actively working in careers in science, mathematics, engineering, computer science, economics, medicine and many other mathematics- related fields. Our own experience in that program has provided us with a theoretical model for PROMYS. We have adapted aspects of the Ohio State Program to our own environment at Boston University, and have introduced strategies for the discovery of bright and eager young students from all backgrounds.