A Head for Numbers
by Laura Vanderkam
Anarghya Vardhana grew up solving math problems with her dad on the way to school. Before tenth grade, she'd breezed through calculus. But her first big breakthrough as a math genius came two years later, when the proof for a new theorem popped into her brain — a set of starting values for the Lucas-Lehmer test for prime numbers.
Vardhana's epiphany did more than get her into Stanford, where the 18-year-old is about to start her third term. It also scored her $10,000 from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. Jan and Bob Davidson — creators of the educational software Math Blaster and Reading Blaster — give these prizes to teens as a sort of junior MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called genius grants.
Vardhana is using her prize to help pay for school. "Although, if I had it my way," she says, "it would probably go toward my buy-Anarghya-a-motorcycle-or-Ferrari fund!"
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