Emmanuel College Student Leads Team to University Challenge Victory

Wed, 07 Apr 2010

A student from Emmanuel College at Cambridge University has become an internet sensation after he guided his team of four students to victory in the University Challenge final. 19 year old Alex Guttenplan studies natural sciences at Cambridge and displayed a near-encyclopaedic knowledge as he racked up the points in each round on course to his team’s victory. His calm retort to the famously stern interviewer Jeremy Paxman that his answer hadn’t, as suggested, been a guess, found favour among internet users and social networkers.

Guttenplan, who attended a £20,000 a year Westminster school after becoming frustrated with state education, is now the subject of a number of Facebook fan groups, with female users stating their admiration for the bespectacled teenager.

Guttenplan’s family are no strangers to the academic world, as his father is the renowned American writer and journalist D. D. Guttenplan, who commented that he was ‘very proud’ of his son.

Despite helping his team score 315 in the final – an ‘astonishing’ feat in the words of Paxman – Guttenplan remained modest about his team’s achievements, saying his knowledge derived from nothing more than spending too much time on Wikipedia.
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