Sami Gattoufi, Recipient of the Honorable Mention of the H. Strogatz Prize

Who knew that there is a Museum of Mathematics – the only math museum in North America and they just awarded eight high-school students for outstanding projects that celebrate the universality of math using social media, visual art, writing and dance.

Sami Gattoufi, was actually one of recipients of the Honorable Mention of the H. Strogatz Prize for Math communication award. He is a Tunisian who was born and raised in Bizerte.

The brilliance of Sami Jr. was noticed by his family at a very young age. They did their best to support and provide their gifted kid with what he needs to reach his goals and succeed.

At high school, Sami had a lot of free time. He decided to read about art he thought that maybe he would change his mind about it. This helped him realize the difference between Art and Kitsch, he then decided to dive even deeper and spend his free time learning the history of art, as a result he fell in love with it and made his mind to create his own philosophy to become a great artist. Why not become one of the greatest.

Hard work pays of, add great talent to the recipe and success will be guaranteed. In 2 years, the artwork of our Tunisian pride was chosen to be in the famous Rijksmuseum beside the artwork of some of the greatest of all time such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt.

One trip to the Netherlands had a huge impact on his mentality. Visiting the M.C Escher museum who used mathematics in his art work was inspirational, also having the chance to see The Night Watch by Rembrandt, The Girl with Pearl earring by Vermeer and some of Van Gogh’s paintings was a dream becoming true for him.

Sami’s brilliance allowed him to discover three mathematical sequences approved by the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. His most recent achievement is getting an honorable mention at the Steven H. Strogatz Prize for his theory on how to unify Art and Mathematics.

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