Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists

The Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS) (pronounced "promise") is a six-week residential summer math program for high school students. The program is directed by Glenn H. Stevens Professor of Mathematics at Boston University, who founded PROMYS in 1989. PROMYS is an intensive and immersive math experience for math-loving students who want to tackle fundamental mathematical problems in a deeply rigorous way. PROMYS prides itself on building a collaborative mathematical community which maintains long-term social and intellectual ties.
The program is open to high school students, although college students and above participate as counselors (one for every 3 or 4 students). The counselors hold informal seminars on various topics, such as the p-adic number system. Some nights a guest lecture is organized during which mathematicians and people working in math-related subjects such as Wolfram Group lecture on what they find interesting and worth sharing. Many of the PROMYS alumni enter academia.
Student research topics have included Ducci sequences (also known as the n-numbers game), dragon curves, arithmetrees, and tropical algebraic geometry. In 2008 the advanced courses featured Galois theory, representation theory of finite groups, and geometry. Through dealing with a usually intuitive subject with mathematical rigor, the geometry course exposes its students to many areas of mathematics, including set theory, algebra, and non-Euclidean geometry. The 2013 advanced courses were in Wavelet Transformations, Geometry and Symmetry, and Representations of Finite Groups.
The predecessor to PROMYS was the Ross program, of which Glenn Stevens and many of the advanced course instructors are graduates.
PROMYS is committed to its policy that no student should be unable to attend because of lack of funds, and the program offers both full and partial scholarships. In order to maintain this policy and help assure PROMYS’s continued existence in the face of diminished federal support for academic programs, alumni formed the PROMYS Foundation a 501(c)(3), in 2011.

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