Brazilians win medals at Int’l Mathematical Olympiad

Brazilian students are bringing a gold and four bronze medals to the country from the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The gold medal was bagged by 17-year-old Pedro Lucas Lanaro Sponchiado, from São Paulo, who ranked 12th in the contest, which brought together 594 thousand students and over 107 teams from across the world. The six representatives from Brazil were selected after four exams were taken by Brazilian students as part of the national phase.

The young Braziliian winners - OMB/All Rights Reserved

The bronze medals were won by Bruno Brasil Meinhart, 17, and Pedro Gomes Cabral, 15, both from the city of Fortaleza, Ceará state; as well as Bernardo Peruzzo Trevizan, 16, and André Yuji Hisatsuga, 18, from São Paulo city.

The team was headed by teachers Régis Prado Barbosa and Armando Barbosa Filho, and occupied the 18th place overall. The results surpassed those of last year, when Brazil ranked 37th, with two silver and one bronze medals, and two honorable mentions. In 2017, IMO was held in Rio de Janeiro.

Preparations

“This achievement comes to crown the years-long preparation work of the Brazilian representatives at the International Olympiad,” said Claudio Landim, deputy director at the Pure and Applied Mathematics Institute, the organization spearheading Brazilian Mathematics Olympiads.

IMO is the oldest prestigious scientific Olympiad for high-school students. It was created in 1959 and was joined by Brazil in 1979. Over the course of the last 39 years, Brazilian teams brought home 130 medals—10 gold, 43 silver, and 77 bronze, in addition to 32 honorable mentions.

In 2019, IMO is slated to take place in England, and in Russia in 2020.