Qiaochu Yuan

WASHINGTON

Qiaochu Yuan, 17, of Bellevue, submitted an Intel Science Talent Search mathematics project connecting the classical normal form for an elliptic curve with a recent normal form. Qiaochu's work in algebraic geometry gave an explicit normal form for curves of genus 1 as the intersection of two quadric surfaces, together with their group laws. In doing so, he translated the classical formulation to the new normal form for elliptic curves introduced recently by H. M. Edwards. Such intersections are easy to compute, and may be of practical use in computer-aided design. Qiaochu, who was born in China, is first in his class of 334 at Bellevue Senior High School. He participates in the Seattle Infinity Math Circle, and earned perfect SAT scores. He also enjoys playing piano, guitar, Ultimate Frisbee, and is an active participant in online math and problem solving forums. The son of Feng Yuan and Ying Peng, Qiaochu enjoys independent research and taught himself multiple computer programming languages, as well as advanced theories in math. He hopes to enroll at MIT or Princeton, and aims to discover deep connections between disparate areas of math.