A tie at the summit
The official scoreboard of EGMO 2023, held in Portorož, Slovenia, lists Nogah Friedman of Israel on 42 points out of 42 with a gold medal. Thirteen other contestants matched the total, which means the competition produced no outright individual winner on score alone.
The fourteen included all four members of the Chinese team — Shuwen Hu, Lai Yuan, Sihan Su and Yiran Qiu — together with Fidan Garayeva of Azerbaijan, Maria Drencheva of Bulgaria, Polina Henyk of Ukraine, Isabella Zhu and Vivian Loh of the United States, Xiangyue Nan of Australia and two Turkish contestants, Melek Güngör and İrem Gülce Yazgan.
What 42 points requires
The paper sets six problems and marks each out of seven. The problems are not calculations with answers to be checked but propositions to be proved, and the marks follow the completeness of the argument rather than the correctness of a final line.
Marking is done by coordination between the examiners and the team leaders, solution by solution. A score of 42 means that six written proofs were read closely by people looking for gaps and that none were found. It is the hardest possible result to argue with.
The rest of the table
Below the perfect scores the 2023 scoreboard falls away quickly, through gold, silver and bronze medals to honourable mentions, awarded on bands of score rather than fixed positions. Roughly fifty countries took part, most with teams of four, giving a field of about two hundred.
The following year the picture was completely different: at EGMO 2024 in Tskaltubo, Georgia, the highest score in the world was 41, by Hannah Fox of the United States, and nobody reached 42. The contrast is the clearest available measure of how much the difficulty of a single paper can move the results.
Israel at the olympiad
Friedman's row on the scoreboard carries a seven in every problem column, next to the Israeli flag. National teams at EGMO are chosen through domestic selection, so a place on the team is itself the outcome of a competition, and a perfect paper at the olympiad puts a contestant at the front of everyone who came through that process worldwide.
The scoreboard adds no commentary, no team totals beyond the arithmetic and no profiles. It is a record of what was written on the day, which is both its limitation and the reason it can be relied on.
What is documented — and what is not
The firm facts are the score of 42 out of 42, the gold medal, the country, the year and the host city, all from the olympiad's official scoreboard, and the count of fourteen perfect papers in the same table.
Everything else is absent. No age, date of birth, school or home town appears in the source, no photograph, no interview and no report of any later result. Whether Friedman has competed at other olympiads, in Israel or internationally, is not documented in the sources gathered here.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nogah Friedman | Israel | Perfect 42/42 at EGMO 2023 | — |
| Junghun Ju | South Korea | A perfect score at the International Mathematical Olympiad | — |
| Amber Li | Australia | Three consecutive EGMO gold medals | — |
| Aida Mitroi | Romania | Three consecutive EGMO gold medals | — |
| Alisa Volkova | Russia | She solved five of the six problems outright and finished twelfth in the w | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Perfect score of 42 out of 42 at EGMO 2023 (official scoreboard)
- Competed for Israel; awarded a gold medal
- Fourteen perfect scores recorded that year; none above 41 the following year
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No date of birth, age, school or home town in the source
- No photograph, interview or personal detail with the result
- No record of other olympiad appearances or of anything after 2023
Questions people ask about Nogah Friedman
What did Nogah Friedman achieve?
A perfect score of 42 out of 42 at EGMO 2023 in Portorož, Slovenia, with a gold medal, competing for Israel.
Did she win the olympiad?
Fourteen contestants scored 42, so the top of the 2023 table is a tie rather than a single first place.
How old is Nogah Friedman?
No source in this record gives her age or date of birth. The scoreboard publishes names, countries and scores only.
How are olympiad papers marked?
Six problems, seven marks each, assessed on the completeness of the written proof through coordination between examiners and team leaders.
Is Nogah Friedman on Wikipedia?
No Wikipedia article was found for her. The official EGMO scoreboard is the primary published record.
How rare is a perfect score?
Fourteen contestants managed it in 2023. At the following olympiad, in 2024, the highest score in the world was 41.
Where is Nogah Friedman now?
No source in this record says. The published trail is the 2023 scoreboard entry.
How big was the field?
Roughly fifty countries, most fielding teams of four, giving about two hundred contestants.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Friedman’s story?
How many contestants scored a perfect 42 at EGMO 2023?
Which country did Nogah Friedman compete for?
How many problems does an EGMO paper contain?
Sources
- EGMO 2023 scoreboard — European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (official), 2023-04
- EGMO 2024 scoreboard — European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (official), 2024-04
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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