Calcutta: Food and maths are his passions with maths enjoying a slight edge. Bengali boy and Scotland resident Agnijo Banerjee won the International Mathematical Olympiad scoring a perfect 42 last month.
Born in Calcutta, Agnijo moved to Scotland with his parents when he was just two. But the Bengali soul remains - be it his love for posto, biryani or onko.
Agnijo secured full marks in all six questions, carrying seven marks each, at the olympiad and bagged top honours along with a student from the US. More than 107 countries sent nearly 600 contestants to the olympiad.
Sample the first of the six questions, the easiest according to Agnijo: "Let be the circumcircle of acute-angled triangle ABC. Points D and E lie on segments AB and AC, respectively, such that AD = AE. The perpendicular bisectors of BD and CE intersect the minor arcs AB and AC of at points F and G, respectively. Prove that the lines DE and F G are parallel (or are the same line)."
The participants had to solve three questions in four-and-a-half hours and tackle three more in the same time the next day. "It took me 30 minutes to solve the first problem and then I finished the second and third problems, which were on algebra and combinatorics respectively with an hour to spare," said Agnijo, who is at his grandparents' home in Calcutta on vacation and asked for a second helping of ol (yam) at lunch. "The second day was tougher and I finished with just about five minutes to spare."
Agnijo made it to the six-member team that represented the UK at the olympiad after a series of tests. Thousands had applied for the opportunity.
"Agnijo was intelligent from the start but he was naughty too. So. when we first received a call from Woodhill Primary School in Glasgow we thought he was in trouble. When we entered the room and saw seven or eight of the top teachers, we thought he was about to be thrown out. But they told us of his proficiency with numbers," mother Promita said.
The boy, who has co-authored two books with a former astrophysicist from Nasa, David Darling, was fast-tracked to the maths syllabus of higher classes. He went on to complete postgraduate programmes in mathematics at University of Dundee while still in school and even topped the evaluation.
"I want to pursue research in unsolved avenues of maths like the Reimann Hypothesis about the distribution of prime numbers and deals with zeros," said Adrijo, who is set to join Trinity College, Cambridge, for a programme in Mathematical Tripos.
When Agnijo is not solving maths problems, he practises his taekwondo moves - he is a red belt - or tends to community gardens.
He is also very close to brother, Aaryan, 12, who suffers from Down Syndrome and cerebral palsy.
The die-hard foodie enjoys the alu-posto his mom makes and has a list of favourite biryani restaurants in Calcutta that are a must-visit on every holiday, along with Peter Cat for the chelo kebab.
