From ABC News:
Michael Viscardi, a senior from San Diego, won a $100,000 college scholarship, the top individual prize in the Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology.
Viscardi said he's been homeschooled since fifth grade, although he does take math classes at the University of California at San Diego three days a week. His father is a software engineer and his mother, who stays at home, has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, he said.
...
Viscardi tackled a 19th century math problem known as the Dirichlet problem, formulated by the mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet. The theorem Viscardi created to solve it has potential applications in the fields of engineering and physics, including airplane wing design. He said he worked on it for about six months with a professor at UCSD.
"He is a super-duper mathematics student," said lead judge Constance Atwell, a consultant and former research director at the National Institutes of Health. "It was almost impossible for our judges to figure out the limits of his understanding during our questioning. And he's only 16 years old," she said.
Some news stories described his project. This article goes into even more detail. This is an outstanding achievement and Viscardi sounds like a prodigy in more than one area.
The NY Times, on the other hand, had this to say about Viscardi.
Michael Viscardi, a senior from San Diego, also won a $100,000 grand prize for his entry, a project that tackled a centuries-old puzzle in mathematical physics.
I suppose you feel that the NYT was a little light in the coverage.
Maybe you're right: what is more uplifting than to hear about the achievements of young people? I know I'd rather read about this than the continuing depressing atrocities/scandals that fill the newspapers.
The modern messengers are pounding their way home as fast as their horses can travel, with warnings, updates on impending dangers, casualties...They aren't rushing to tell us that the crocusses have just blossomed.
Or that a youngster has solved a century old problem in complex analysis.
Good news, even if few of us can comprehend it, such a relief.
You are implying a bias against home schooling by the NYT; I read that 483 word article as a brief overview of the 8 students who won the science prize.
I remember seeing this because two of the winners (Benjamin Pollack and Abhinav Khanna) are students at the school where my wife teaches.
Here's the article in full:
Science Projects in Genetic Data and Physics Win Scholarships
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: December 6, 2005
As summer interns working at a laboratory in Phoenix, Anne Lee and Albert Shieh, two high school students, came across a problem reading computerized information on the human genome.
Instead of giving up or switching to a less challenging project, Ms. Lee and Mr. Shieh persevered, and months later developed new software that experts believe may increase the rate of accuracy in genetic data analysis.
For their accomplishment, Ms. Lee, 17, and Mr. Shieh, 16, won the top prize yesterday as a team in the Siemens Westinghouse Math, Science and Technology competition - a $100,000 scholarship that they will share.
Michael Viscardi, a senior from San Diego, also won a $100,000 grand prize for his entry, a project that tackled a centuries-old puzzle in mathematical physics.
The three were among 19 high school students from across the country who were awarded prizes during the annual competition's finale yesterday at New York University. The Siemens Westinghouse awards are among the nation's most prestigious science prizes, and range in value from $10,000 to $100,000.
"It's really exciting," Mr. Shieh, a junior at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Ariz., said after his name was called. "I'm still kind of in shock."
The finalists who were invited to New York for the awards ceremony had already won top honors in a series of regional competitions at six universities last month. More than 1,600 students submitted entries this year - the greatest number in the competition's history, officials said. (The Siemens Westinghouse competition is separate from the Intel Science Talent Search, which was sponsored by Westinghouse from 1942 to 1998 and is now sponsored by Intel.)
Peter von Siemens, the great-great-grandson of Werner von Siemens, who founded the Siemens company in the 1840's, commended the students as the next generation of "great scientific architects."
Adam Solomon, a senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, on Long Island, won a $40,000 scholarship for his research on brown dwarfs, the dim starlike objects. Another team, Benjamin Pollack and Abhinav Khanna, who are seniors at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School on Long Island, won a $50,000 prize for their genetic research on fruit flies.
Huy Nguyen and Gerald Tiu, from Orange County in California, won a $40,000 scholarship for their research in the field of chemistry and the environment. Growing up close to Los Angeles, the young men said they felt the effects of polluted air early in life, and wanted to devote their spare time to studying the ozone layer.
Ran Li, 17, from Valley Stream on Long Island, developed what he called "a better Band-Aid" with his partner, Amardeep Grewal, of Beverly Hills, Mich. They will share a $20,000 scholarship. Their dressing may help in curing wounds that fail to heal on their own. Mr. Li said they were inspired by the number of soldiers in Iraq coming home with serious injuries.