This year, 50 schools signed up, bringing together almost 700 students. As always, we are delighted by the diversity of the participating schools: public and private, urban and rural, and even some outside metropolitan France—everyone does their bit! Each teaching team organizes an exciting range of activities: hosting exhibitions, meeting authors, writing reviews, designing posters, producing podcasts, and more. Besides being able to explore particular topics in class, teachers use the project to take mathematics beyond the classroom.
As it does every year, the Littéramath group put together a selection of books about mathematics—but not one of them is a textbook, of course! Students were able to discover essays, novels and graphic novels. Sometimes the plot involves mathematics; sometimes mathematics is the book's very subject. The history of mathematics is represented too. At each school, the jury splits into two groups, each covering half the selection. At the end of the first phase, each group ranks its books and then reads the other group's favorite. In early May, each jury chose its winner.
The 2025 winners
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Once the rankings from all the high schools had been combined, the 2025 results could be determined. Our young readers' verdict is as follows. Two honorable mentions go to Volume 1 of Yûgo Kobayashi's manga Fermat Kitchen (Mangetsu, 2023) and Antoine Houlou-Garcia's Et la pomme ne tomba pas sur la tête de Newton (And the Apple Did Not Fall on Newton's Head; Albin-Michel, 2024).
Finally, the 2025 Tangente High School Students' Prize goes to Emmanuel Marie, Hervé Pajot and Stefano Realdini's Laurent Schwartz, les engagements d’un médaillé Fields (Laurent Schwartz: A Fields Medalist's Causes; Petit à petit, 2024). The students enjoyed discovering, through this documentary graphic novel, a figure they had not known before, and the strength of his commitments greatly impressed them.
The 2026 Tangente High School Students' Prize is already under way!
Are you a teacher interested in taking part in the 2026 Tangente High School Students' Prize next school year? Then hesitate no longer: registration is already open! Here is the selection for the 2026 Tangente High School Students' Prize:
• Matheuses, les filles avenir des mathématiques (Maths Girls: Girls, the Future of Mathematics), Clémence Perronnet, Claire Marc and Olga Paris-Romaskevich, CNRS éditions, 2024;
• Une mathématicienne au jardin (A Woman Mathematician in the Garden), Claire Lommé, Tana, 2024;
• Ma petite histoire des nombres (My Little History of Numbers), Étienne Ghys, Odile Jacob, 2025;
• L’univers de pi (The Universe of Pi), Jean-Baptiste Aubin, Anita Lehmann, Helvetiq, 2025;
• Alan Turing, Maxence Collin, François Rivière, Aleksi Cavaillez, Casterman, 2024;
• Sofia Kovalevskaïa, vie et révolutions d’une mathématicienne géniale (Sofia Kovalevskaya: The Life and Revolutions of a Brilliant Woman Mathematician), Alice Milani, Cambourakis, 2023;
• Histoires extraordinaires des mathématiques et de l’informatique en BD, tome 3 (Extraordinary Stories of Mathematics and Computer Science in Comics, Volume 3), Nesim Fintz and Han-Mi Kim, Anfortas, 2025;
• La conjecture des hirondelles (The Swallow Conjecture; complete edition), Thierry Lefebvre, SoRaTu, 2024.
The Tangente High School Students' Prize is organized by the Littéramath group of the Association des professeurs de mathématiques de l’enseignement public (APMEP).
For information and registration, visit www.apmep.fr/prix-tangente-des-lyceens.
