Olga Medrano Martín del Campo, a 17-year-old girl from Jalisco, is the first Mexican to win the Gold Medal at the European Girl’s Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO), which was celebrated in Busteni, Romania earlier this month.
Medrano caught the media’s attention after thousands of Mexicans were praising the now viral celebrity #Lady100pesos on social media for trying to bribe a police officer while intoxicated. When Olga’s information was shared on the Internet, everyone realized they were celebrating the wrong girl.
“It’s a competition for European girls but they extend an invitation to other countries such as, Mexico, Japan, the U.S., and we won two important medals,” Medrano Martín del Campo said during an interview.
Medrano was not the only teen making Mexico proud. She was joined by Alka Xavier Earathu, a Silver Medal recipient, Jackeline Lira Chávez and Marcela Cruz Larios. The girls’ overall development throughout the math contest situated Mexico in the number 13 position in a list of 39 participating countries.
According to Milenio.com, Olga’s next goal is to follow the steps of her older brother, Adán, who is currently a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and where she hopes to enroll as Mathematics major as soon as she graduates from high school.
Olga has been representing her country in this competition since she was 15 years old, and was previously awarded with the Bronze Medal. In a country where more than half of the students show low performance in the science field, according to data provided by the OCDE (Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos), this is an accomplishment worthy of a viral movement.
The inaugural EGMO was held at Murray Edwards College in Cambridge, UK in April 2012. Since then, the Mathematical Olympiad has travelled to Luxembourg, Turkey, Belarus and Romania. The 2017 EGMO is scheduled to happen in Zürich, Switzerland.
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