Melanie Wood

Melanie Eggers Wood, born 1981 in Indianapolis, Indiana, is a graduate student mathematician currently studing at Princeton University. She has set numerous "firsts" as a female in the area of mathematics.

Melanie's mother, Shirley, began teaching her mathematics at age three, in order to instill in Melanie the spirit and memory of her father Archie (a middle-school math teacher), who died of cancer when Melanie was only six weeks old. By age four, she began to show signs of becoming a child prodigy in mathematics, as a result of being "bored walking around the mall" her mother began to teach her linear equations.

Melanie's incredible mathematical ability would emerge in seventh grade. She entered a national contest, MathCounts; she was not a spectacular math student in school but was asked to participate "at the last minute" since the school needed another team member. With no prior preparation or knowledge of the contest, Melanie surprised herself and everyone else by finishing first. She would then continue her amazing streak by finishing first in state, and later 40th in the entire nation. The following year (having the ability to prepare ahead of time) she finished 10th in the nation. Her success brought with it a "sense of isolation"--neither her friends nor her mother could understand the complex mathematics Melanie was able to solve with relative ease nor the importance they held in young Melanie's life, and the one person who could have, her late math teacher father, was not there to share in her triumphs. Over time, she came to accept her loss, and in doing so gained the spirit and memory of her father, as her mother had hoped when she first started teaching Melanie mathematics. Melanie continues to work with the MathCounts program to this day.

Melanie was the first, and until 2004, the only female American to make the U.S. Math Olympiad Team (1996-1999), receiving silver medals in the 1998 and 1999 International Mathematical Olympiad.

Being heavily recruited by top universities, Melanie chose to attend Duke University due to its strong emphasis on undergraduate research.

She won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship in 2003, in addition to becoming the first American woman and second woman overall to be named a Putnam Fellow. In 2004, she won the Morgan Prize for work in two topics: Belyi-extending maps and P-orderings. Her paper on the second topic was published in the Journal of Number Theory.

In 2005, she was named the Deputy Leader of the U.S. team for the 2005 International Mathematical Olympiad.

Trivia

• Melanie's mother, a foreign language teacher, tried to teach Melanie both French and Spanish along with math; those attempts were unsuccessful and she elected to allow Melanie to pursue her own academic interests.
• Melanie was the third Duke math team student (and first female) to have her "number retired". Unlike many math students who choose irrational numbers, Melanie chose the simple "2".
• In addition to mathematics, Melanie has an interest in theater, having been involved in several Duke University productions. She sees the two having commonality, both requiring a degree of technical and creative abilities.

External links

• A Conversation with Melanie Wood (Math Horizons magazine)
• The Girl Who Loved Math (Discover magazine)

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