Again.
That may sound like something out of a Hollywood movie, but O'Dorney's story is better suited for a reality show, with O'Dorney playing himself, a kid whose mental prowess can't be challenged enough.
On Tuesday, O'Dorney, a home-schooled high school senior from Danville, won this year's Intel Science Talent Search and its $100,000 cash prize. The results were announced at a dinner in the nation's capital, capping a weeklong, all-expenses-paid trip for the top 40 contestants that included a meeting with President Barack Obama.
"Just twice," he said, when asked how many times he has met the leader of the free world. "Oh, and I had talked to Obama on the phone one other time."
Indeed, meeting presidents, winning contests and wowing scholars has become rather routine for the 17-year-old. In 2010, he beat out nine of the nation's brightest young math minds at the American Mathematical Society's "Who Wants to Be a Mathematician?" One of his rewards was the phone chat with Obama. And, in 2007, he won the Scripps National Spelling Bee and was welcomed by President George W. Bush.
"I'm getting pretty comfortable with it by now," he said of his fame, which may escalate Monday when he is scheduled to be interviewed on CNN's "American Morning."
O'Dorney was one of six Bay Area finalists -- the other five are from the South Bay -- and one of 11 from California. Only two of them -- one from Sacramento and another from San Diego -- joined O'Dorney in the top 10.
He submitted a project that solved a complex math problem, involving the square root of numbers. A Stanford University professor had other students able to solve the problem in specific cases, but O'Dorney solved the problem -- "Continued Fraction Convergents and Linear Fractional Transformations" -- in general terms.
In a layperson's summary, O'Dorney wrote: "Many methods exist for approximating the value of a square root by ordinary fractions, including the venerable method of continued fractions (hereafter called Method I) and the newer method of iterating a linear fractional transformation (Method II). "... In this project, I have discovered and proved an unexpectedly simple formula that allows one to predict, given a particular square root, whether the two methods yield infinitely many results in common."
"It was a year before I was able to work it specifically," O'Dorney said Tuesday, "and several months before I generalized and specified. I just had to stick with it."
O'Dorney attends the San Ramon Valley school district's Venture School for independent study and home-schooled students. He will attend Harvard in the fall.
But lest anyone think O'Dorney's life revolves around math, he said he intends to balance that passion with a similar one he has for music. He plays the piano.
"And," he said, "I like to improvise my own music."
Intel's competition, billed as the country's oldest and most prestigious high school science contest, started in 1942 and was previously known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Winning the competition, O'Dorney said, left him "excited and shocked."
"Especially the judging interviews and all the science questions," he said. Working with scientists who are in very different fields than me, I'm very grateful."
As for what's next for the kid with a limitless future?
"Well," he said. "I've got to get caught up on my schoolwork."
Contact Rick Hurd at 925-945-4780 and Eric Louie at 925-847-2123.
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