Evan Dummit's webpage

Northeastern Putnam Club

Main. Teaching. Course Notes. Lectures. Putnam Club.

About the Northeastern Putnam Club:

The Putnam Club meets regularly in the fall and spring semesters every Wednesday in 509 Lake Hall from 6pm-7:30pm.
Officially, the purpose of the Putnam Club is to prepare students to take the William Lowell Putnam Examination, which is a 12-problem, 6-hour mathematics competition held on the first Saturday of December each year.
Unofficially, the purpose of the Putnam Club is to provide a place for interested students to come have fun working on challenging but accessible mathematics problems once a week.
Our meetings are quite relaxed and informal: each week one of the faculty members who organizes the club puts together a sheet of old Putnam problems for everyone to work on that week, and then during the meeting everyone works on them for about an hour and then discusses the solutions collectively. There is no expectation of solving any of the problems, just to have fun thinking about them and socializing with likeminded peers!
Since the meetings are around dinnertime, we also provide pizza and some other food items, including vegan and gluten-free options.
In Fall 2026, the faculty organizers of the Putnam Club are Prof. Evan Dummit and Prof. Harm Derksen. If you are interested in joining the club or being put on the email list, please contact Prof. Dummit.

About the Putnam exam:

The William Lowell Putnam Examination is the premier undergraduate mathematics competition for North American students. It is a 12-problem, 6-hour mathematics competition held on the first Saturday of December each year.
The problems on the Putnam exam are scored out of 10 points each, so the maximum possible score on the exam is 120 points. However, the problems are extremely challenging: in some years, the median score on the exam is 0 points, meaning that half (or more!) of the competitors scored no points at all. As such, solving even a single problem correctly is a noteworthy accomplishment.
Monetary prizes and some brief mathematical fame are available for top competitors, but at Northeastern, our goals are simply to have fun at the competition and to learn something from the experience of working on the problems.
Students wishing to participate in the competition must register ahead of time. For registration information, please contact one of the Putnam Club organizers.

Weekly Problem Sheets: