The State - News from March 16, 1988

A 16-year-old junior at UC Davis is one of six students nationwide and the only student from the West Coast to win a Putnam Fellowship for math. The award, announced by the Mathematical Assn. of America, is the result of a six-hour exam that 2,170 students from 359 colleges and universities took last Dec. 5. John Tillinghast was able to solve at least nine of the 12 questions on the exam--he doesn’t know his exact score--whereas most students are lucky to solve even a couple. In solving the problems, “none of the standard techniques are going to work, usually. You have to use imagination and ingenuity,” said David Mead, a mathematics professor at Davis and coach of the university’s math team. Tillinghast started classes at Davis in 1985, at age 14, after spending just two years in high school, one in St. Paul, Minn., and one at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento.