The scoresheet
The olympiad runs over two mornings, three problems each, four and a half hours per paper, with every problem marked out of seven. Zhu's line in the 2019 results is six sevens in a row. There is no higher score and no tie-break above it, so he is listed as joint first with the other perfect papers.
Partial marking makes that row harder than it looks. Coordinators award points for progress, so most strong contestants finish with a mixture: sevens on the problems they closed, ones and twos where they found the idea but not the proof. A clean row means six complete, checkable arguments inside nine hours of examination.
Two perfect papers from one team
Each country may send six contestants. In 2019 the United States sent six and two of them, Zhu and Colin Shanmo Tang, came back with maximum scores. The four other perfect papers that year belonged to Baiting Xie and Zhizhen Yuan of China, Youngjun Cho of South Korea and Jan Fornal of Poland.
Team results at the IMO are simply the sum of six individual scores, so two maximums is worth 84 points before the rest of the team writes a line. It is the arithmetic behind the American squad's standing that year.
The problem of a common name
The research file for this page carries a warning that applies to readers as much as to editors: Daniel Zhu is a common name. Searches return mathematicians, students, researchers and executives who are not this contestant, and biographical pages built from search results routinely fuse two or three people into one.
This page therefore claims nothing beyond the olympiad database entry attached to the 2019 United States team. Any age, university, employer or photograph found elsewhere under the name should be treated as a separate claim requiring its own source.
How hard 42 is
The olympiad's regulations cap medals at half the field and distribute gold, silver and bronze in roughly a one to two to three ratio, so a gold medal typically falls to about one contestant in twelve. Perfect scores are a far smaller group and their number swings wildly with the difficulty of the paper.
Bath in 2019 produced six. Oslo in 2022 produced ten. Bath again in 2024, with a paper that punished the whole field, produced exactly one, Haojia Shi of China. A 42 is therefore partly a measure of the contestant and partly a measure of the year, which is why the roll of perfect scorers is read alongside the ranks rather than instead of them.
What is documented, and what is not
Documented by the IMO's own database: the year, the host city, the field of 621, the country he represented, his six problem scores, his total of 42, his rank of 1 and his gold medal.
Not documented there or anywhere else in this file: his age or date of birth, his school, his home town, his university, and any result after 2019. No press coverage naming him was collected for this page, and no later olympiad appearance appears in the results consulted.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daniel Zhu | United States | A perfect 42/42 at the International Mathematical Olympiad, 2019 | — |
| Colin Shanmo Tang | United States | A perfect 42/42 at the International Mathematical Olympiad, 2019 | — |
| Youngjun Cho | South Korea | A perfect 42/42 at the International Mathematical Olympiad, 2019 | — |
| Galiia Sharafetdinova | Russia | A perfect 42/42 at the International Mathematical Olympiad, 2022 | — |
| Ihor Pylaiev | Ukraine | A perfect 42/42 at the International Mathematical Olympiad, 2022 | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Scored 42/42 at IMO 2019 in Bath for the United States
- Ranked joint first with a gold medal
- Seven points on each of the six problems
- One of six perfect papers among 621 contestants
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No age, date of birth, school or university in these sources
- The name is common and other people share it
- No later IMO appearance or career information recorded
Questions people ask about Daniel Zhu
What did Daniel Zhu achieve?
A perfect 42 out of 42 at the 2019 International Mathematical Olympiad in Bath, ranking joint first with a gold medal.
How old is Daniel Zhu?
No age or date of birth is published in the sources used here.
Which country did he compete for?
The United States.
Who else on the US team scored 42 that year?
Colin Shanmo Tang.
Is this the same Daniel Zhu as other people with that name?
The name is common and this page makes no claim beyond the 2019 olympiad record. Other pages using the name may refer to different people.
Is Daniel Zhu on Wikipedia?
No standalone article is recorded for him in this file.
How many people score 42 in a typical year?
It varies sharply: six in 2019, ten in 2022, one in 2024.
Where is Daniel Zhu now?
The sources used here do not say.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Zhu’s story?
What score did Daniel Zhu record at IMO 2019?
How many contestants competed in Bath in 2019?
How many perfect scores were there at the 2024 IMO?
Sources
- IMO 2019 individual results — International Mathematical Olympiad (official), 2019
- Daniel Zhu - IMO contestant results — International Mathematical Olympiad (official), 2019
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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