Harvard College student Eliot Hodges ’25 of Denver has been named one of 16 Churchill Scholars for the 2025-26 academic year, the Winston Churchill Foundation announced this month.
The Churchill Scholarship funds one year of master’s study in science, math, or engineering at the University of Cambridge. Hodges will pursue a one-year M.A.St. in pure mathematics.
“I am really excited to spend the next year at Cambridge studying mathematics,” Hodges said. “I am very grateful to the Churchill Foundation for the opportunity, and also to the many professors and classmates who have supported me throughout my time as an undergraduate. At Cambridge, I am particularly looking forward to the historic Part III program, being immersed in a different culture, meeting students from around the world, and, of course, learning lots of math.”
A Mathematics concentrator, Hodges has conducted research in arithmetic statistics with Melanie Matchett Wood, William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics, with a focus on computing statistics of various random groups arising in number theory, particularly sandpile groups and class groups of number fields. He is also president of the Harvard Undergraduate Mathematics Association, works as a course assistant, and spent two summers at Duluth University’s Mathematics Research Experience for Undergraduates, researching enumerative and algebraic combinatorics.
Hodges’s senior thesis focuses on computing certain statistics of class groups of orders in number fields.
Outside of his work in math, Hodges studies cello with Professor of the Practice Kee-Hyun Kim, and takes a chamber music course every semester. He performs occasionally on campus, including at the Arts First Festival every spring.
The Churchill Scholars program was established in 1963 at the request of Sir Winston Churchill as part of the founding of Churchill College. The program aims to fulfill Churchill’s vision of deepening the U.S.–U.K. partnership to advance science and technology on both sides of the Atlantic.
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