Reid William Barton (born May 6, 1983) is a mathematician and also one of the most successful performers in the

International Science Olympiad The International Science Olympiads are a group of worldwide annual competitions in various areas of the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. The competitions are designed for the 4-6 best high school students from each partic ...

s..

Biography

Barton is the son of two environmental engineers. Officially homeschooled since third grade, Barton took part-time classes at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

in chemistry (5th grade),

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

(6th grade), and subsequently

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, French, and

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

. Since eighth grade he worked part-time with MIT computer scientist

Charles E. Leiserson Charles Eric Leiserson is a computer scientist, specializing in the theory of parallel computing and distributed computing, and particularly practical applications thereof. As part of this effort, he developed the Cilk multithreaded language. ...

CilkChess Cilk, Cilk++, Cilk Plus and OpenCilk are general-purpose programming languages designed for multithreaded parallel computing. They are based on the C and C++ programming languages, which they extend with constructs to express parallel loops ...

, a computer chess program. Subsequently, he worked at

Akamai Technologies Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...

with computer scientist

Ramesh Sitaraman Ramesh Sitaraman is an Indian American computer scientist known for his work on distributed algorithms, content delivery networks, streaming video delivery, and application delivery networks. He helped build the Akamai content delivery network ...

to build one of the earliest video performance measurement systems that have since become a standard in industry.Ramesh Sitaraman and Reid W. Barton. After Akamai, Barton went to grad school at Harvard to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics, which he completed in 2019. Afterwards, he did research as a post-doctoral fellow at Pittsburgh. As of November 2021 he sits on the committee for the

Mathematical and programming competitions

Barton was the first student to win four gold medals at the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except i ...

, culminating in full marks at the 2001 Olympiad held in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, shared with

Gabriel Carroll Gabriel Drew Carroll (born December 24, 1982) is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto. He was born to tech industry worker parents in Oakland. He graduated from Harvard University with B.A. in mathematics and linguist ...

, Xiao Liang and Zhang Zhiqiang. Barton is one of seven people to have placed among the five top ranked competitors (who are themselves not ranked against each other) in the

William Lowell Putnam Competition The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regar ...

four times (2001–2004).William Lowell Putnam Competition
Mathematical Association of America list of Putnam winners Barton was a member of the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

team which finished second in 2001 and first in 2003 and 2004. Barton has won two gold medals at the

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming and one of the International Science Olympiads for secondary school students. It is the second largest science olympiad, after International Mathematical Olympi ...

. In 2001 he finished first with 580 points out of 600, 55 ahead of his nearest competitor, the largest margin in IOI history at the time. Barton was a member of the 2nd and 5th place

team at the

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest The ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest, known as the ICPC, is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor Dr. William B. ...

, and reached the finals in the

Topcoder Open Topcoder Open (TCO) is an annual design, software development, data science and competitive programming championship, organized by Topcoder, and hosted in different venues around US. In the first two years, 2001 and 2002, the tournament was titl ...

(2004), semi-finals (2003, 2006), the ''TopCoder Collegiate Challenge'' (2004), semi-finals (2006), TCCC Regional finals (2002), and TopCoder Invitational semi-finalist (2002).

Other accomplishments

Barton has won the

Morgan Prize :''Distinguish from the De Morgan Medal awarded by the London Mathematical Society.'' The Morgan Prize (full name Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student) is an annual award given to an un ...

awarded jointly by the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

and the Mathematical Association of America for his work on packing densities. Barton has taught at various academic Olympiad training programs for high school students, such as the

Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program The Mathematical Olympiad Program (abbreviated MOP, formerly called the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program, abbreviated MOSP) is an intensive summer program held at Carnegie Mellon University. The main purpose of MOP, held since 1974, is to selec ...

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Selected publications

* *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Barton, Reid W. 1983 births Living people Putnam Fellows Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 21st-century American mathematicians People from Arlington, Massachusetts International Mathematical Olympiad participants Competitive programmers