---
title: "Tanya Khovanova"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Tanya Khovanova"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Mekh-mat coffin problems","V.A. Senderov","antisemitism in Soviet mathematics","1975 Soviet Olympiad team"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


Mathematician, member of the USSR's 1975 International Mathematical
Olympiad team, later on the research staff at MIT. Writes in first person
on her own site (tanyakhovanova.com) about being recruited in 1975 by math
teacher V.A. Senderov, along with her Olympiad teammates, to solve a
smuggled list of Mekh-mat's "coffin problems" — deliberately hard entrance
questions used to fail Jewish applicants — for use in coaching those
applicants. Her team of eight solved only half the list in a month. Later
co-authored "Jewish Problems" (arXiv:1110.1556) with Alexey Radul, a
scholarly problem collection built on the same material.

## References
- [[claim-khovanova-1975-olympiad-team-recruited-to-solve-smuggled-mekh-mat-coffin-problems]]
- [[claim-mekh-mat-coffin-problems-used-to-fail-jewish-applicants]]
- Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-20-do-primaryscholarly-sources-confirm-that-mekh-mats-coffin.md