Ayan Nath, a 17-year-old student of Kaliabor College in Nagaon district has brought laurels to Assam by winning the 2021 Spirit of Ramanujan Fellowship.

The Spirit of Ramanujan grants and mentorship opportunities to young mathematicians and scientists who lack traditional institutional support.

Experienced in Olympiad mathematics, Ayan has remained active in the art of problem solving community for several years.

Ayan Nath started his early years of schooling at Delhi Public School.

In the later part of 2009, due to the shifting of his father, Dr Milan Nath (who is a Professor at the Department of Mathematical Science, Tezpur University) to Tezpur from Guwahati, his mother (Preeti Deka) quit her job and moved to Tezpur University Campus along with him.

Ayan passed Class 10 from KV, Tezpur University Campus and is currently studying in higher secondary (science) Class 12 at Kaliabor College, Nagaon.

He has been a mathematics enthusiast from his early years.

In Class 6, he secured first position in Category 1 of Assam Mathematics Olympiad.

In Class 7, he started gaining interest in computers and learned a lot of stuff about computers.

He also learned several programming languages like Python, C++ and Java.

Ayan learned about computer hardwares up to the point that he could assemble and fix computers on his own.

At this point, his father was worried about his obsession with computers and told him that
mathematics is important in order to learn how computers work.

As advised by his father, in Class 8, Ayan learned about Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) and Indian
Statistical Institute (ISI), the heaven for students interested in mathematics and is a target of every Indian math lover.

He was getting good ranks in the state level Olympiad. Later on, he got to know that one can
get direct admission into these institutes by just clearing INMO (Indian National Mathematical Olympiad).

He cleared RMO 2017 (Regional Mathematical Olympiad) in Class 9 with an acing score of 80/102 and topped the list in KV/JNV region.

Ayan secured a respectable score of 38/102 in INMO 2018 in Class 9 and was awarded a merit certificate which allowed him to directly sit for INMO 2019. He sat for INMO 2019 in Class 10.

Simultaneously, he was also preparing for board exams.

He qualified INMO 2019 with a score of 68/102. He attended IMOTC 2019 (International Mathematical Olympiad
Training Camp) in Class 10 after appearing for his board exams.

In board, he secured 95.6% from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Tezpur University Campus.

In Class 11, he primarily prepared for IMO and became proficient in solving IMO problems.

He qualified for IMOTC 2020 in Class 11 but unfortunately, the Team Selection Tests (TSTs) didn’t taken place for IMO 2020 (International Mathematical Olympiad) due to the Covid19 pandemic.

He was pretty good at number theory and learned analytic number theory in Class 11 and 12.

He is also interested in creating original problems. He along with one of his friend successfully published a number theory problem in the prestigious Hungarian journal of KöMaL for high school Mathematics and Physics (November 2020).

To popularise analytic number theory among Olympiad contestants, he prepared a hand-out on the topic of analytic number theory for Olympiads and posted it online on AoPS.

He wrote an original article discussing and analysing a number theory problem and submitted it to the journal of American Mathematical Monthly published by the Mathematical Association of America, which was accepted for publication on December 24, 2020.

In Class 12 too, he qualified for INMO 2021 and has been awarded the 2021 Spirit of Ramanujan Fellowship.

He has used his fellowship to secure advanced Mathematics books for his research career.

“His future plan is to study B.Sc. in Mathematics at CMI (Chennai Mathematical Institute) for which he will get a scholarship from the National Board of Higher Mathematics (NBHM) being an INMO awardee,” Ayan’s father, Prof. Milan Nath told Northeast Now.

In addition to mathematics, he is a devoted Arch Linux user and enjoys listening to Prog Metal.