Nitya Mani, grade 12, earned first place in the Karl Menger Memorial Awards for the second year in a row!  The award was presented by the American Math Society at the 2015 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in mid-May. Mani received the first-place award of $2,000 for her project, titled “Characterizing the Constructible N-Division Points of the Rational C-Hypocycloids through Straightedge and Compass Constructions.”

“In her project Nitya investigated the important question of constructibility of division points on plane curves and showed that, for any integer N, the N division points of any rational c-hypocycloid are constructible with an unmarked straightedge and compass, given a pre-drawn hypocycloid. She also characterized the constructibility of N division points of a tricuspoid in the absence of a pre-drawn hypocycloid. Nitya’s original and very impressive work uses many advanced results and techniques from several areas of mathematics, including Galois theory, abstract algebra and algebraic number theory,” said Menger awards chair Mihai Stoiciu. See more at: http://www.ams.org/news?news_id=2685 (Photo is also from that site.)