Imre Leader

Who is Imre Leader?

Imre Bennett Leader is a British mathematician and Othello player. He is Professor of Pure Mathematics, specifically combinatorics, at the University of Cambridge.

He was educated at St Paul's School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1981 he was a member of the United Kingdom team at the International Mathematical Olympiad, where he won a silver medal. In 1999-2001, he led the UK IMO team as its chief trainer.

He has been the most consistently successful Othello player in Britain, winning the national championship 10 times between 1983 and 2010. In 1983, he was runner-up in the World Othello Championship, and in 1988, he was on the UK team that won the World Team Championship.

In mathematics, his work has concentrated on combinatorics. He completed his PhD, entitled Discrete Isoperimetric Inequalities and Other Combinatorial Results, in 1989, supervised by Béla Bollobás. Godson of mathematical philosopher Imre Lakatos, he is currently a fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge.