UK IMO Register: IMO 1979

The 21st International Mathematical Olympiad was held in London (with Leaders in Bristol for the initial part of the IMO, and everyone in Oxford at the end of the IMO) from 28 June 1979 (arrival of leaders) to 9 July 1979 (departure). This page collects scans of documents relating to IMO 1979.

The documents here were provided by David Monk. Contributions of additional relevant documents are welcome. In general 600dpi grayscale scans are preferred for documents being sent electronically. Most documents are provided here in black-and-white for reasons of space; the original grayscale (or in some cases colour) scans may be available on request.

Problems

Contributions of the missing original papers are welcome for languages where only one day’s paper is available here.

• Bulgarian
• Portuguese
• Spanish (day 1 only)
• Czech
• Slovak
• Finnish
• French
• German
• English (day 2 only)
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hungarian
• Dutch
• Polish
• Russian (day 2 only)
• Romanian
• Swedish
• Vietnamese
• Serbo-Croat

Results and Coordination information

Contributions of official results lists or lists mapping contestant codes to names are welcome.

• Results of each contestant on each problem, unofficial transcript by David Monk. Where these transcripts had corrections in a different colour, colour images are also available: problem 1, problem 5.
• Notes on Coordination

Programmes

Contributions of other programmes, invitations and similar documents are welcome, especially those showing events for contestants or documents listing names of Leaders, Deputy Leaders and people involved in organising the IMO (such as generally appear in programme booklets for recent IMOs).

• Jury programme during residence at Churchill Hall, Bristol (28 June–3 July): English, French, German, Russian.
• Invitation to informal reception, 28 June.
• Visit of Team Leaders to Clifton College (2 July): English, Russian.
• Recital by Angela Malsbury (Clarinet), Richard Crabtree (Viola), David Pettit (Piano) (1 July): English, Russian.
• Jury programme during residence at Westfield College, London and in Oxford (3–9 July): English, German.
• Exhibition of mathematical manuscripts and printed books, Radcliffe Science Library, 7 July.

Information about past UK IMO teams

• Summary of results of questionnaire sent to past UK team members.
• Scans of the three-page list of details of past team members, a predecessor of the current UK IMO Register, can be provided on request to those listed on the current Register.

Proposed problems (shortlist and longlist)

The documents here do not include solutions; contributions of any solutions contemporaneously distributed to or among the Jury or Coordinators to inform problem selection and mark schemes are welcome.

Note that the shortlist is in English, while the longlist problems from some countries are in French or German. Also note that the longlist page here of problems proposed by Czechoslovakia does not include problem CS4 from the shortlist (I do not know if this means there is a missing second page in the longlist, but there is no sign from the IMO Compendium of there being any other missing pages here, and the UK report on this IMO gives the total number of longlist problems as 80, which is the figure if CS4 is not counted; with CS4 there are 81 problems), and that problem GR4 on the shortlist appears as GR5 on the longlist.

• Shortlist (26 problems)
• Longlist, by proposing country:
  • Belgium (6 problems)
  • Brazil (3 problems)
  • Bulgaria (4 problems)
  • Czechoslovakia (3 problems, see note above)
  • The Federal Republic of Germany (4 problems)
  • Finland (3 problems)
  • France (4 problems)
  • The German Democratic Republic (4 problems)
  • Greece (5 problems)
  • Hungary (5 problems)
  • Israel (4 problems)
  • The Netherlands (3 problems)
  • Poland (4 problems)
  • Romania (5 problems)
  • Sweden (4 problems)
  • The U.S.A. (6 problems)
  • The Soviet Union (3 problems)
  • Vietnam (5 problems)
  • Yugoslavia (5 problems)

Bibliography

The following publications either relate to IMO 1979, or contain significant material relating to it. Contributions of additional references are welcome.

IMO 1979 publications

• German reports: the booklet The German Teams at the International Mathematical Olympiads 1959–2008 gives the following references:
  • Alpha 13 (1979), Heft 6, 125
  • Mathematik i.d. Schule 18 (1980), Heft 6, 334–343
  • Praxis der Mathematik 21 (1979), 335–340 (Sewerin)
• UK report: Colin Goldsmith, The 21st International Mathematical Olympiad, Mathematical Spectrum 12 (1979–80), 33–35.

General publications

• Dušan Djukić, Vladimir Janković, Ivan Matić and Nikola Petrović, The IMO Compendium: A Collection of Problems Suggested for the International Mathematical Olympiads: 1959–2004, Springer, 2006. Contains 1979 shortlist and longlist with solutions to the shortlist problems.
• Tony Gardiner, IMO-OMI: Reflections, The Mathematical Gazette 86 (2002), no. 506 (July 2002), 198–200. Discusses coordination of IMO 1979 Problem 3.

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