2020 Erdos Awards Announced

I am pleased to announce three winners of the Erdos Award for the year 2020. These would normally be awarded at ICME or the WFNMC Conference. Two of them will be with the Czech team at IMO at the time of ICE-14 and will be presented at a later date. We hope that the third will be awarded as long as the coronavirus emergency is by then over and ICME-14 can be held in Shanghai.

Professor Gangsong Leng, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, has served as a member of the China Mathematics Olympiad Main Examination Committee for the past 20 years. He was coach of the National Training Team of the China Mathematics Olympiad, and director of the CWMO Main Examination Committee. He was the national team leader of China Mathematics Olympiad in 2007; and the Vice-Leader of China Mathematics Olympiad National Team in 2006 and 2009. During this period, he contributed many test questions for the Chinese Mathematics Competition. In 2005 to 2006, the Mathematics Trainers’ Guild (MTG), Philippines sought the expertise of Prof Gangsong Leng to train our Filipino students for their participation in the 2006 Southeast Asia Mathematical Olympiad (SEAMO) which was held in Penang, Malaysia. From 2006 to 2010, he was selected to be the special training facilitator of the Hong Kong students for the International Mathematics Olympiad. From 2011 to 2014, he was the guest facilitator of Macau Team for IMO.

Professor Jaromir Simsa, Czech Republic, has served as the Chairman of the National Committee of Czech MO since 2000 through present. He has been for 25 years involved in training Czech contestants for the International Mathematical Olympiads. Several times he acted as the leader of the Czech Republic team at IMOs. He started the Junior Czcch¬-Polish-Slovak Mathematics Competition, jointly with Waldemar Pompe of Poland. Many of his problems were used at the Czech-Polish-Slovak (CPS) Mathematics Competitions. All his problems are of a very high quality, serving not only as great competition challenges but also later as a valuable teaching material. In fact, Jaromir Simsa is the author of more than 250 mathematics Olympiad problems used in the Czech Mathematical Olympiad over the past 30 years. In 2020, he will once again serve as the Leader of the Czech Team to the International Mathematical Olympiad in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Professor Jaroslav Svrcek, Czech Republic, has for 12 years, 2004 to 2016, served as the Editor of the WFNMC journal Mathematics Competitions, From 1996 to 2014 he was one of the most active mathematicians in the training of the Czech team at the International Mathematical Olympiad and during most of those years he was either Team Leader or Deputy Team Leader. He founded the Mathematical Duel (together with Jozef Kalinowski of Poland). He worked for years on a national Czech journal one for students. For the past 20 years, he served as Vice-Chairman of the Czech Mathematical Olympiad. In 2020, he will once again serve as the Deputy Leader of the Czech Team to the International Mathematical Olympiad in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Kiril Bankov
President WFNMC
Sofia
05 February 2020