Two Harvard Math Graduates Honored for Outstanding Research

The American Mathematical Society (AMS) honored two Harvard math graduates with the 2026 Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student.

Yunseo Choi, a ’25 Harvard math and physics graduate, will receive the prize for her significant contributions across a wide variety of mathematical topics and applications, including number theory, combinatorics, and applications in economics and computing. According to an announcement by the AMS, “Choi has demonstrated a unique ability to make [these] significant contributions using novel ideas and techniques, performing research with a truly extraordinary degree of intellectual maturity and independence for an undergraduate student.” Her manuscripts have already been published in a number of prestigious journals. And while her research contributions are impressive on their own, the AMS announcement also emphasized Choi’s prowess as a research mentor. She has already mentored several of her own research students, resulting in accepted publications.

During her time at Harvard, Choi was named a Goldwater Scholar in 2024 and received the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize in 2025. Currently, she is a first-year graduate student at MIT, where she is supported by the Ida M. Green Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Eliot Hodges, a ’25 Harvard math graduate, received one of the two Honorable Mentions for the Morgan Prize. The AMS cited his substantial contributions in the three distinct fields of probability and random matrices, arithmetic statistics, and combinatorics. It emphasized the creativity, technical skill, and independence of his work, evident in several published sole-author papers.

During his time at Harvard, Hodges was one of the two recipients of the David Mumford Prize in 2025. Currently, he is a Churchill Scholar earning a Master of Advanced Study in Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. In the fall of 2026, he will begin his PhD studies at Princeton University, where he will study number theory.

Daniel Larsen from MIT was the second person to receive an Honorable Mention, alongside Hodges.

The Morgan Prize was jointly established in 1995 by the AMS, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).