The Esat Young Scientist Exhibition is an annual competition held in Dublin, Ireland for encouraging interest in science in secondary schools. Recent exhibitions have had in excess of 1000 entrants.

Recent winners of the competition

Adnan Osmani was the winner of the 2003 competition for his project The graphical technological and user-friendly advancement of the internet browser: XWebs. He developed a new networking socket and web browser that enables faster internet access even with an ordinary modem.

David Michael O'Doherty was the winner of the 2002 competition for his project The Distribution of the Primes and the Underlying Order to Chaos. He is a mathematics undergraduate in the University of Cambridge. His prize was for research into the second Hardy-Littlewood conjecture, an unsolved problem in number theory which concerns the number of primes in intervals.

Peter Taylor, Shane Browne and Michael O'Toole were winners of the 2001 competition for their project Investigating symmetrical shapes formed by polygons. They solved a problem in geometry concerning how regular polygons can be arranged into circular patterns of optimum symmetry.

Thomas Gernon was the winner of the 2000 competition for his project The geography and mathematics of Europe's urban centres. His prize was for mathematical analysis of the trends in urbanization in Europe.

Sarah Flannery was the winner of the 1999 competition for her project Cryptogaphy - A new algorithm versus the RSA. She is currently a mathematics undergraduate in the University of Cambridge. She researched a new cryptographic algorithm involving matrix algebra which was faster than the RSA (which depends on the difficulty in factoring large integers). Flannery leapt to fame as the speed improvements attracted the attention of the press. Subsequent study showed that the algorithm, while faster, was not secure enough to replace the RSA. She wrote a book on her algorithm and number theory in general called "In Code: A Mathematical Journey" (ISBN 0761123849).

Raphael Hurley was the winner of the 1998 competition for his project The Mathematics of Monopoly. In his project he determined a system for optimally selecting properties in the boardgame Monopoly, based on the probability of a player landing on those properties.

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