The Ukrainian girls’ maths team has won the top European team at the 2023 Olympiad, the European Girls’ Maths Olympiad announced on its website on Tuesday. 55 teams from around the world – 38 from Europe – competed in this year’s International Mathematics Competition in Slovenia.
China took the top overall maths prize, followed by the US and Australia, with Ukraine in fourth place – but first overall among European competitors. In total, 213 high school-aged girls participated in the competition; European countries such as Italy, France, Finland and the Netherlands sent 115 competitors, while the rest came from countries as diverse as Mexico, Brazil, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The organization said that in order to participate in the international competition, the girls had to win the national competition in their own country.
European Girls Mathematics Competition via Facebook
Over two consecutive days, the girls solved three math problems and spent four and a half hours writing the solutions. Answers are scored and awarded medals based on the complexity of the problem. The Ukrainian team took home 1 gold and 3 silver medals – making them the most successful European team at the competition. A total of 26 gold medals and 36 silver medals were awarded, according to the results posted on the organization’s website.
Ukrainian media reported that the mother of one of the participants, Lyudmila Frankevich, posted on her social media that the girls “never aim to participate” but “only to win” – and this year “they managed it for glory!”
In 2022, the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad, which has been running math competitions for a decade, Ukraine decided to exclude Russia as an eligible country due to its invasion. Four Russian girls were allowed to compete as individual citizens, but could not represent the country, the organization said.
Later that year, Ukrainian Yulia Zadanovska, a 2016 and 2017 competitor and a silver medalist, was killed by Russian shelling in the city of Kharkiv. Zdanovska dreamed of teaching math to children in rural villages when she was 21, according to the organization.
After Zdanovska’s death, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s mathematics department started a free math enrichment program for Ukrainian refugees in her honor.
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