By Caterham School
While most A level pupils spent their post-exam summer kicking up their heels, Alex Mylet enjoyed a very different travel experience: one which saw him ranked as the UK’s top young physicist, as well as in the top 50 globally. Alex, 18, was one of the five-strong GB team competing at the International Physics Olympiad in Tokyo, finishing with a silver medal after completing two five-hour papers, one experimental and one theoretical.
Alex’s journey began in November 2022, when a new year of the British Physics Olympiad was launched. He, along with 49 other Caterham School students, applied to take part in the gruelling first stage of the country’s most prestigious physics competition, joining over 4,000 students nationwide. From here, only 180 participants who achieved the ‘Top Gold’ standard, which included Alex, moved on to the even more demanding Round Two.
This paper required an undergraduate level of comprehension and advanced mathematics to make even a slight headway into the questions posed, but Alex relished the challenge. He made it through to Round Three, the five-day long Easter camp in Oxford where the GB team was chosen.
Once his exams were done in July, he jumped on a plane to Tokyo with his teammates. Alongside the lengthy exam papers, they were also able to get stuck into a range of cultural experiences.
To add to his achievement, Alex was awarded five A* grades at A level in August and will study mathematics and computer science at St John’s College, Oxford this autumn.
