Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics

The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) is an American residential program for mathematically talented high school students. The program has been conducted each summer since 1971, with the exceptions of 1981 and 1996, and has more than 1500 alumni.¹²

The program was created, and headed for many years, by David Kelly, a professor of mathematics at Hampshire College.³

The program, which was housed at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts for over 51 years, generally runs for six weeks from early July until mid-August. The program itself consists of lectures, study sessions, math workshops (general-knowledge classes), maxi-courses (three-week classes run by the senior staff members), and mini-courses (specialized shorter classes).

On a typical day, students spend four hours in the morning in class, have lunch together with the faculty, and then have several hours to use at their leisure. During this "down time" students and faculty members often host quasis, where they participate in an activity as a small group, such as juggling or making sushi. They return for the "Prime Time Theorem" (an hour-long talk on an interesting piece of mathematics given by a faculty member or a visitor), have dinner, and then spend three hours in a problem solving session. One of the instructors blogged the content of her class.⁴⁵

Many students go on to professional careers in mathematics. An occasional publication⁶ has resulted from work done at the program. Well-known alumni of the program include two MacArthur Fellows, Eric Lander and Erik Winfree, as well as Lisa Randall, Dana Randall, and Eugene Volokh.⁷ Many alumni return to the campus for a few days around Yellow Pigs Day (July 17) of each year. This observance was formalized for 2006 in "Yellow Pig Math Days," which was conducted in observance of 2006 being the 34th offering of the HCSSiM Program (34 being a multiple of 17).⁸

The Summer Studies has been funded in the past by the American Mathematical Society⁹ and the U.S. National Science Foundation.¹⁰

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Summer Studies ran online for a shortened program of four weeks.

Despite the closing of Hampshire College, the 2026 Summer Studies will be held at Hampshire's campus, and the program is expected continue at a new campus in 2027.¹¹

Alumni of HCSSiM include many mathematicians and others in related (and not-so-related) fields.⁷

• Gabriel Aeppli, professor of physics at ETH Zurich, co-founder of the London Centre for Nanotechnology, Fellow of the Royal Society
• Julie Ahringer, Fellow of the Royal Society, professor of genetics at the University of Cambridge
• Douglas N. Arnold, professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota
• Jeremy Avigad, professor of philosophy and mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University
• J. Stewart Burns, television writer and producer known for his work on The Simpsons¹²
• Bram Cohen, developer of BitTorrent, co-founder of CodeCon
• Matthew Cook, group leader at the Institute for Neuroinformatics at ETH Zurich and computer scientist who proved the Turing universality of Wolfram's Rule 110 cellular automaton
• Lenore Cowen, computer scientist and mathematician at Tufts University
• Marie desJardins, former dean of College of Organizational, Computational, and Information Sciences at Simmons University, formerly at SRI International
• Alan Edelman, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan Fellow
• Aaron M. Ellison, retired Harvard ecologist
• Glenn Ellison, professor of economics at MIT
• Judy Goldsmith, professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky
• Alan Grayson, former member of the U.S House of Representatives for Florida's 8th and 9th Congressional Districts
• Marcia Groszek, professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College
• Neil Immerman, professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Guggenheim Fellow
• Adam Tauman Kalai, game theorist and computer scientist who works at OpenAI
• Susan Landau, professor in cybersecurity and policy at Tufts University, Guggenheim Fellow
• Eric Lander, professor of biology at MIT and science advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, MacArthur Fellow and Rhodes Scholar
• Adam Leibovich, theoretical physicist and dean at University of Pittsburgh
• Russell Lyons, professor of mathematics at Indiana University Bloomington
• Adam Marcus, professor of mathematics at Princeton University
• Barry Nalebuff, professor of management at Yale University, co-founder of Honest Tea
• David Notkin, former professor of computer science and engineering at University of Washington
• Cathy O'Neil, data scientist, author, and blogger at Mathbabe¹²
• Eve Ostriker, professor of astrophysics at Princeton
• Michael Pepper, physicist notable for his work in semiconductor nanostructures, Fellow of the Royal Society
• Bjorn Poonen, professor of mathematics at MIT, Putnam Competition winner
• Jim Propp, professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell
• Dana Randall, professor of computer science at Georgia Tech
• Lisa Randall, professor of theoretical physics at Harvard University, author, Fellow of the Institute of Physics
• Jessica Riskin, professor of history of science at Stanford University
• Robert Schapire, computer scientist at Microsoft Research, former professor of computer science at Princeton
• Ed Scheinerman, professor of applied mathematics and statistics at Johns Hopkins University
• Seth Schoen, technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, author of the DeCSS haiku
• Noam Shazeer, computer scientist at OpenAI, who co-led Google Gemini and founded character.ai
• Steven Strogatz, professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University¹²
• Lisa Su, chair and CEO of AMD¹²
• John Sullivan, professor of mathematics at Technische Universität Berlin
• Jennifer Taback, professor of mathematics at Bowdoin College
• Ann Trenk, professor of mathematics and biomedical engineering at Wellesley College
• Eugene Volokh, legal scholar at the Hoover Institution, professor emeritus of UCLA School of Law, author of The Volokh Conspiracy
• Martin M. Wattenberg, professor of computer science at Harvard University, known for work in data visualization at Google and IBM Research
• Victor Wickerhauser, professor of mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis
• Elizabeth Wilmer, professor of mathematics at Oberlin College
• Erik Winfree, professor of computer science and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, MacArthur Fellow
• David Zuckerman, professor of computer science at University of Texas at Austin