Where have the International Math Olympiad Gold Medallists Ended Up? Part One of Three
North Korean defectors, Buddhist monks, and Twitter-famous quants
What do a North Korean defector, the first female Fields medallist, and a Buddhist monk-turned-therapist-influencer have in common? They all participated in the most prestigious high school math competition in the world: the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO).
The 65th IMO has just come to a close (team USA won 🇺🇸) and I wanted to dig deep into the outcomes of the most successful participants from this competition.
Why do I care so much?
I was an enthusiastic but mediocre participant in the British Mathematical Olympiad (BMO) from 2008-2010. The best performers on the BMO go on to represent the UK at the IMO. Rather than describe how badly I did, I have just annotated the distribution of marks from an equivalent year. I was far from representing the UK. We must have had some geniuses on the team, I thought.
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2009 (!) University of Wisconsin-Madison Placement Office study of “reform vs traditional math” outcomes came to mind when reading Corrinne Hess’s 7 July 2026 article: “Fewer than half of Wisconsin students are proficient at math“.
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