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Hannah Kang

Biography

Hannah Kang is a rare combination of student. She is brilliant in math but also idealistic about saving the world. A December 2005 week in Haiti, repainting elementary schools, tore at her heart. “The stark contrast between the breathtaking natural beauty of the country and the poverty of its people was unforgettable,” she says. Earlier, she had visited her sister in a New Mexico hamlet, where she teaches in a school with “too few teachers, too many students, and far too much apathy.”

Hannah’s math instructor, Jon A. Creamer, saw the dichotomy of her interests. He called her an “insightful problem solver” who knew what it meant to write “good” mathematics. She also had an acute “ability to keep everyone, myself included, honest. “ She listened hard to what her classmates said, and would speak up to clarify some vagueness “or to offer advice that kept things going in interesting directions.” And, he says, she did it with a humbleness that “speaks volumes to her outstanding and generous character.”

As she finishes high school, Hannah is, of course, weighing her options. She might become an engineer, “producing cost-effective technology for poorer countries,” she says, or she might major in economics and then work for a nonprofit “hoping to aid inner-city schools.”

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