Which university's Math Championship did Feynman win in high school?

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Which university's Math Championship did Feynman win in high school? He won New York University's Math Championship.

The achievement came during Feynman's final year at Far Rockaway High School in Queens, New York. He was already far ahead of the standard school mathematics curriculum and had taught himself subjects including trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and calculus by age 15.

Feynman's mathematical ability was unusually independent. He developed his own notation for functions and derivatives and experimented with ideas such as fractional derivatives before entering college. He was also a member of the Arista Honor Society, a school honor organization.

A common mix-up is to associate Feynman with Princeton or Columbia. Princeton later awarded him his doctorate, while Columbia rejected his application because of its admissions quota for Jewish students. He instead attended MIT, where he first studied mathematics before moving through electrical engineering to physics.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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