Challenges have always brought fresh energy to the subjects on which they are based. In mathematics, they have existed for many centuries.
Yet the first mathematical competition organized in Europe within a school setting dates back only to 1894. Organized in Hungary for high-school students on the initiative of the Hungarian Mathematical and Physical Society, it was named after Baron Eötvös, then Hungary's Minister of Education.
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The Alsace rally, a trailblazer that led the way
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Mathematical competitions subsequently developed, slowly at first, until the 1970s. The International Mathematical Olympiad was founded in 1959 at the initiative of the USSR, which had been organizing competitions since the 1930s, while Nicolaï Konstantinov founded the Tournament of the Towns in 1980. Until the pioneering "rallye mathématique d'Alsace" appeared, the Concours général was France's only such competition. The rally was devised in 1973 by Georges Glaeser of Strasbourg's université Louis-Pasteur, to whom France owes its distinctive use of the word "rally" for a problem-solving competition.
