William Cooper

I have always had a passion for Science. I thoroughly enjoyed Science and mathematics at school, particularly enjoying Chemistry. During my studies at GCSE, my father and I converted out shed into a lab, complete with chemicals, equipment, even a fume cupboard. With this I developed a real love for the subject, and went on to study it in college, along with mathematics. Curiously, it was in college when I was studying mathematics that I realised how much I enjoyed the subject, and how good I was at it. At the end of the first year of AS mathematics, the class was split up into teams and competed against each other in mathematics questions. Since my team mates were less than enthusiastic, it was me against the rest of the teams, almost the entire class. Despite these odds I managed to win the competition single handedly, without the help of my team mates, and win the prize of a small chocolate bar (which I did not feel compelled to share with my less than helpful friends!) If you had asked during school what I wanted to do, I would have said 'Study chemistry of course!' However the challenging and rewarding time studying at college changed my mind, and set me on a path into the fascinating subject of mathematics. Along with maths, I have a love for computer science and coding, having been writing software since I was 10 (when I submitted my geography homework on rivers in the form of a computer program!). I have created a fully function 8-bit computer on Yenka (which had to be done in stages because their software couldn't keep up with the complexity of the circuit) and more recently a powerful piece of software that graphs complex functions using GPU acceleration. (see picture) And that leads me to this day, still studying and loving the subject, reading around it whenever I can, constantly thinking of implementations of mathematical algorithms I come across, and looking forward to the next stage!