Word: mathes
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...first learned about Kedlaya from my first-year roommate Hank Chien, another member of the math elite subculture. My roommate had placed twelfth in the U.S. Math Olympaid, so he always had stories about what life was like on the math competition circuit. ARML, AHSME, AIME, USAMO, MOP--I was buried in math acronyms during my first year at Harvard. Naturally, I quickly learned the names of the legends in the math community, most of whom were at Harvard--Lenny Ng, Sergey Levin, Manjul Bhargava...
Kedlaya was always at the top of the list. As a first-year, if you were stuck on a proof for Math 21a, you called Kedlaya, who was guaranteed to solve the problem in 30 seconds flat...
...call interrupts the interview. It's someone from the Math department telling Kedlaya that a $1,500 prize check is waiting for him at the math office from the Putnam competition. Apparently, being good at math can be profitable as well...
...Kedlaya does not live for math alone...
Hanging from his belt is a black two-by-three inch beeper given to him by the Red Cross. Apparently, when Kedlaya isn't tackling the latest math problem, he's driving an ambulance-like vehicle around Boston, helping disaster victims with housing, food, and first aid. As director of disaster services for Friends of the Red Cross, Kedlaya manages 20 Harvard students, dispatching them to fires where people are in need of help. He tells me that he last received a call on his beeper just 10 minutes...