San Gabriel Student Garners ‘Nobel’ for High School Science
A teen-ager from San Gabriel High School who discovered a protein-based enzyme that one day could help alleviate high blood pressure was one of 10 students across the United States who won the 50th annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search on Monday, known as the “Nobel Prize of High School Science.”
Tessa Walters, 16, who hopes to attend Harvard University, placed sixth out of 40 finalists and will receive a $15,000 scholarship.
A second California student, Rageshree Ramachandran, 15, of Fair Oaks in Northern California, placed 10th and will receive a $10,000 scholarship for her research into a computer model that studies the oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon known as El Nino.
Wei-Jen Jerry Shan, 17, of Riverside, the third student from California who made it to the finals, will receive $1,000 for participating in the prestigious competition, which rewards promising young talent in mathematics and science.
About 1,500 high school seniors entered the competition, which is sponsored by the Westinghouse Electric Corp. and conducted by Science Service Inc., a Washington-based nonprofit organization that fosters science education. The 10 top winners are chosen by a panel of the nation’s most eminent scientists, who meet with the students in Washington over a three-day period and measure their creativity in a series of interviews.
Since the competition began in 1942, former Westinghouse winners--known as “Westies”--have gone on to win some of the most coveted international science and math awards in the world. Five former finalists are Nobel laureates. Two have earned Fields Medals, the Nobel equivalent in mathematics. Eight have won MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, known as the “genius grants.”
This year, first prize in the competition and $40,000 went to Ashley Reiter, 17, of Charlotte, N.C., who completed a project on Pascal’s Triangle, a mathematical device invented by 17th-Century French mathematician Blaise Pascal for computing combinations of numbers. As in other recent years, students from the New York metropolitan area did well, capturing seven of the top 10 spots.
With educators searching desperately for ways to pique student interest and improve performance in math and science, the top 10 Westinghouse winners offer an intriguing glimpse into what makes students succeed.
Both Walters and Ramachandran, who are products of California public schools, say they are consumed by curiosity to understand how things work, which leads them to develop their own answers when none exist.
In addition, both students credit their parents and some intuitive teachers for sparking and encouraging a lifelong interest in math and science.
Walters’ mother, who teaches remedial math at San Gabriel High School, whetted her daughter’s natural curiosity by enrolling her in summer classes at the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. Her father, a jazz musician who plays the trombone and has written a symphony, also worked with her.
The teen-ager, who plays volleyball, piano and violin, whizzed through the math and science offerings at San Gabriel and for the last 3 1/2 years has conducted research at Caltech in Pasadena, where she was able to work under internationally respected biologists.
“Tessa Walters clearly has rare potential as an experimental scientist. . . . She also has a rare, intuitive feel for this type of science which will carry her a long way in a scientific career. . . . I predict that Tessa Walters will become a scientist of the first rank,” wrote her former Caltech supervisor, Stephen Kent, a professor of molecular biology now at Bond University in Australia.
Ramachandran, the daughter of statisticians who teach at Cal State Sacramento, said her parents tutored her from an early age and encouraged her interest in science, especially chaos theory. Chaos theory is a new discipline built around the discovery that apparently random patterns in mathematics and nature, on close examination, reveal a structured order.
Born in Madras, India, Ramachandran learned to read by 3, cutting her literary teeth on statistical texts that her parents left around the house. While she prefers the hard sciences to the humanities, the 15-year-old senior does well at both--she won the National Spelling Bee in 1988 by correctly spelling the word “elegiacal.”
Ramachandran is also the student representative to the State Board of Education, and spends about three days a month plowing through school board agendas and familiarizing herself with education issues. She wants to go into biomedical engineering but foresees a career in public policy, “like maybe one day being the surgeon general,” she said.
Her interest in chaos theory began when she picked up a few popular books--”you know, the ones you find in bookstores,” she said. Next, she devoured math texts on the subject, moving on to academic papers.
“Not so many years ago, scientists thought chaos in a system was undesirable. Now there’s a complete turnaround, it’s desirable, even necessary. That 180-degree turn is very interesting to me. . . . That’s what science is all about--breakthroughs and shattering old myths.”
Both winners said they have often fought against the restrictions of high school.
“I got bored, sometimes my teacher would say no, no, don’t go on ahead, stay with the class,” Ramachandran said. “That’s why the idea of doing a science project on my own is appealing. No one can tell me not to set very high goals.”
