Washington
For the first time in the 45-year history of the annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search competition, the top five winners were either born in Asia or of Asian parentage.
The winners were announced at a ceremony here last week.
Two students tied for first place in the contest. Wendy Kay Chung, a 17-year-old senior at Miami Killian High School, and Wei-Jing Zhu, a 16-year-old senior at Brooklyn Technical High School, each won a $20,000 college scholarship.
In addition, Yoriko Saito, 18, of Homewood, Ala., won a $15,000 scholarship. Three finalists won $10,000 scholarships, four won $7,500 scholarships, and 30 others won $1,000 cash awards.
Wei.Jing Zhu was born in Canton, China, and Yoriko Saito was born in Japan. The fourth-place winner, George Jer-Chi Juang, of Queens, N.Y., was born in Taiwan, and the fifth-place winner, Anh Than Nguyen-Huynh, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, was born in Vietnam.
The winners were selected by a panel of nine scientists, who interviewed each of the 40 finalists. This was only the second tie since the search, sponsored by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, began in 1942.
Of the 1,800 former winners in the talent search, five have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, two have won Fields Medals for distinguished work in mathematics, and three have been awarded MacArthur Fellowships.
To become a finalist, Wendy Chung studied the behavior of Caribbean fruit flies, which attack more than 80 different types of fruit in Florida. Her study was an attempt to determine at which stage in the fruit’s ripeness the fly attacks.
She plans to attend Harvard-Radcliffe and pursue a career in either biochemistry or medicine.
Wei-Jing Zhu, who has won a series of mathematics awards, selected a problem in algebraic number theory.
He plans to attend either Harvard or the California Institute of Technology.
