John D. Barrow, a British cosmologist whose work has explored the relationship between life and the laws of physics, has been named the winner of the 2006 Templeton Prize for progress on research in spiritual matters. The $1.4 million prize will be conferred on him during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on May 3. The mathematical sciences professor at the University of Cambridge is best known for his research on the ‘anthropic principle’. Barrow is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, many popular books on mathematics, a host of research papers and a prize-winning play, Infinities. Some of the books by Barrow such as Pi in the Sky and The Infinite Book have been runaway bestsellers. He is noted for an ability to explain difficult mathematical concepts to lay people. If you love mathematics and have not yet read Barrow, then, surely, you’ve missed something.

PUZZLE 1: Ten students, sitting in two columns of five each, took their 500-point final exam in advanced calculus. The students’ scores were all multiples of 10 with no two of them receiving the same score. Use the following clues and the professor’s seating chart below to determine which students sat in which seats and the test score each student earned.

Hugh sat next to both Ida and to the student making 82 per cent, which was the lowest grade on the test.George and the student scoring 470 sat in diagonally opposite corner seats.While Chuck sat somewhere between Bill and the student scoring 410, although these three students are not necessarily in the same row. Similarly, Ann sat somewhere between Eve and the student scoring 490. The sum of the scores of the students sitting in the first column is 880.Jerry’s score was 10 points better than Dolly’s but 50 points less than Frank’s. The average score of those in Row 2 is the same as that of those in Row 4, but is 5 points less than the average of those in Row 3.The student with the lowest score of those in the first column sat directly in front of the student with the highest score of those in the second column. The average test score of those in the first column is 46 points higher than the average of those in the second column.

Solutions on April 10

CORRECT ENTRIES

March 13

Sujoy Kumar Goswami; Vinay Pagaria, Calcutta; Soumya Mondal; Amalesh Paul; Arnab Kr Sadhukhan, Calcutta; Ravi Raja, Calcutta; Siddharth Udani, Calcutta; Sreechandra Banerjee, Calcutta, Hemanga Dutta, Assam.

PUZZLE CRACKED

The response this week was dismal. Anyhow the names of those who tried are displayed in the list. Solution: 20 kilometres.

Hint: He starts to work from the first exchange. He takes the end of any two wires, joins them and marks those two wires as the member of group. In this way he makes 59 different groups and marks their 118 member wires .He also leaves special marks on the remaining two wires whose ends are not joined. Then he goes to the other exchange. Now the two wires in a group work as a single conductive wire. Using this idea, he finds out and marks the member wires of 59 different groups. Then he labels others following the same logic. After joining the wires, he returns to the first exchange. In doing so, he traverses the stretch of 10 kilometres twice.