When I was in high school in the 1960's, I participated in a long-established student competition called the Science Talent Search, which in those days was sponsored by Westinghouse. In subsequent years it was sponsored by Intel, and lately by Regeneron. Winners of the competition were feted in Washington and received college scholarships, but it was a fun experience also for the many more of us who just got to spend time studying and building things that helped us appreciate science.
It turns out that that competition is 100 years old now. Here's a press release, and here's a searchable site of notable alumni, among whom are two winners of the Fields Medal, and fourteen Nobel prize winners, so far. The site doesn't identify which noted alumni won awards as students, but my guess is that for most of us participation itself was the prize. And I wonder what can be learned about science and math education from these competitions. (My sense is that you can certainly learn something about American immigration, and about the growing participation of girls and women from the student participants and prizewinners, and the notable alums in each decade...)
Here are this year's student winners: Students Win $1.8 Million at Regeneron Science Talent Search 2022 for Exceptional Research on Neutron Star—Black Hole Systems, Narrowband Radar, and Ribosome Movement in Protein Translation
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