Hannah Cairo shook the math world when she disproved the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture, a 4o-year-old unsolved math problem, when she was only 17.
Well ahead of her peers in math, Cairo applied to colleges when she was 14 and was accepted into UC Davis.
Seeking advice on what to do, she consulted UC Berkeley professor Zvezdelina Stankova, founder of the Berkeley Math Circle, or BMC. Cairo had been enrolled in a BMC summer program. Stankova encouraged her to enroll in graduate-level math courses at UC Berkeley rather than enroll as a student at UC Davis.
“I ended up following (Stankova’s) advice, which, in retrospect, I think was a much better decision,” Cairo said.
Eventually, Cairo learned about the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture, which she would eventually disprove, in a graduate-level math class taught by UC Berkeley assistant professor Ruixiang Zhang.
Cairo is one of many talented mathematicians who have gone through BMC’s programs. Other former BMC students include Oaz Nir, founding partner at Hudson River Trading, a quantitative trading firm with a net trading revenue of nearly $8 billion in 2024, and University of Toronto professor Gabriel Carroll, a four-time top-five scorer in the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, widely considered one of the most prestigious undergraduate math competitions in North America.
However, after 27 years, BMC has shut down its flagship program, BMC-Upper, due to “stringent” new campus background check requirements, according to a statement on BMC’s website.