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The Next Generation of Mathematicians
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| Dmitry Vaintrob and his father, UO professor Arkady Vaintrob. |
In most ways, Dmitry (Mitka) Vaintrob, is a typical UO student; he rides his bike to campus each day, completes his homework each night, and has spent the last two years figuring out exactly which math courses best suit his skill level. Two years ago, he took Honors Calculus, an upperlevel undergraduate course, which he found “a little too easy.” He moved onto Complex Analysis and Differential Geometry, both mixed-level undergraduate/ graduate courses, which were slightly more challenging. Finally, he enrolled in Abstract Algebra, a graduate seminar, about which Mitka happily admits: “I actually don’t know anything, so that’s really interesting.” His experience is likely similar to other students who excel at mathematics, except for one fact: Mitka Vaintrob is fourteen years old. When he is not taking math courses at the UO, he is a freshman at South Eugene High School.
Brad Shelton, mathematics department head, was Mitka’s Abstract Algebra professor this fall. He explains the challenges of having a young teenager in his class: “I couldn’t read his work at the beginning of the term. He had the handwriting of a thirteenyear- old.” So Shelton taught Mitka a mathematical software program, only to encounter a second problem: “He hadn’t yet learned to type!” Aside from penmanship, though, Shelton is quick to add: “He’s just like a regular student, well, one of the better ones.”
For Mitka, the decision to take college courses at age thirteen was an easy one: “There wasn’t anything left (in middle school) that would be interesting for me.” Throughout elementary school, Mitka took math courses a year ahead of his classmates. Between fifth and sixth grade, he says simply, “I taught myself calculus.” At a time when other ten-year-olds were interested in dirt bikes or dodge ball, Mitka explains: “I got really interested in sequences and series. I like the idea that you can take the sum of an infinite number of numbers and get something reasonable. You can take the sum of 1 + 1/8 + 1/27—all inverse cubes—and it’s equal to some number, but nobody knows what it is. So I came up with different formulas to write for that number. And since series are very related to calculus, I learned calculus.”
Such a gift for mathematics might seem natural, given Mitka’s family. Arkady Vaintrob, Mitka’s father, is an associate professor in the mathematics department, his research focusing on the intersection of geometry and physics. After leaving Moscow twelve years ago, Professor Vaintrob taught at Harvard, University of Texas, and New Mexico State before joining the UO faculty four years ago.
His son’s interest in math, though, he insists, is all his own. “He’s always had an inquisitive mind,” says Prof. Vaintrob. “Once he started talking, he was asking questions, not mathematical questions, just general ones.”
There was never pressure on Mitka to follow in his father’s footsteps. Even as Mitka’s attention first turned to math at age six, there was no formal instruction between father and son. “We would go on walks and he would look at the sky,” recalls Prof. Vaintrob. “He would ask about the clouds and then mountains or bugs and he would ask me about numbers; we would have these conversations, but I never taught him seriously. Ultimately, it was his motivation and my knowledge that cultivated (his interest). He was guiding me; he really asked good questions.”
And those questions clearly paid off. Today, Mitka shares a classroom with peers nearly twice his age, undaunted by the age difference: “They’re just like regular kids,” he says. After years of feeling unchallenged, he has finally found a setting that pushes him to succeed: “Abstract Algebra is pretty challenging. In most of my other classes, I already knew most of the material. But in this one, I’m learning along with everyone else. I probably even know less than some other people.”
He acknowledges there are some difficulties. When one professor encouraged study groups, Mitka often was unable to attend because he was home most evenings babysitting his sister. “It made some of the work harder,” he admits. But luckily, he had a study group of his own: “Whenever I had a question, I could ask my dad.”
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1245 University of Oregon • Eugene, OR • 97403-1245
(541) 346.3950 • FAX (541) 346.3282 • alumnidev@cas.uoregon.edu
Copyright © 2004 University of Oregon
Updated June 1, 2004
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