Anirudh Prabhu
Indiana
West Lafayette Junior-Senior High School
Anirudh Prabhu, 17, of West Lafayette, investigated perfect numbers, an ancient subject in number theory dating from Euclid’s work
around 300 B.C., for his Intel Science Talent Search project in mathematics. A perfect number is one which equals the sum of all its
proper divisors, such as 6 = 1 + 2 + 3. There are 47 known perfect numbers, all even. Anirudh considered the odd case, and gave the first
non-trivial analytic lower bound for odd perfect numbers, a bound in terms of the number of distinct prime divisors. By improving his lower
bounds and also improving known upper bounds, one could hope to show that no odd perfect numbers exist. Anirudh is sole author of a paper
describing his findings, published in the International Journal of Contemporary Mathematics, and was also first author of a publication
in the peer-reviewed journal Integral Transforms and Special Functions. Anirudh attends West Lafayette Junior-Senior High School,
where he is president of the math club and the Red Cross Club, which he co-founded in 2010. He was crowned Homecoming King in the fall of 2011.
Anirudh enjoys playing tennis and ping-pong, and is the son of Nagabhushana and Rajini Prabhu.
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