(November 2, 2025) When five American teenagers represented the United States at the 2025 International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) in Paris, they went on to deliver a record-breaking performance. By the conclusion of the event, the U.S. team had made history, clinching all five gold medals for the first time since the country began participating. The achievement not only cemented the U.S. team’s dominance in the world of physics but also became a celebration of youthful brilliance at a time when America’s policies on talent and immigration are under scrutiny.
A moment of pride in the Oval Office
Days after their stunning performance, the five champions — Agastya Goel, Allen Li, Joshua Wang, Feodor Yevtushenko, and Brian Zhang were honoured at the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump personally congratulated the students. Michael Kratsios, a senior aide in the administration, shared a photo from the meeting on X, mentioning that the U.S. President was proud to welcome the 2025 Physics Olympiad champions to the White House.
The Indian-origin prodigy from Palo Alto
Among the five gold medalists, 17-year-old Agastya Goel stood out for the depth of his achievements across disciplines. A junior at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, Agastya is the son of Stanford professor Ashish Goel, a top IIT-JEE ranker who later became a respected academic and former advisor to Twitter in its early years.
For Agastya, intellectual rigour seems almost hereditary. He is already a two-time gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), ranking fourth globally in 2024. His earlier pursuits in computer science evolved into a fascination with physics, which found its finest expression in Paris this year.
“Honored that the U.S. IPhO Team was invited to the White House and had the incredible experience of meeting the President in the Oval Office!” Agastya later wrote in a social media post reflecting on the once-in-a-lifetime moment.
From algorithms to atoms
Agastya’s early accomplishments came in computer science, where he spent years competing at the USA Computing Olympiad (USACO), qualifying as a finalist three years in a row between 2022 and 2024. He also participated in the Mathematical Olympiad Program, was part of PRIMES-USA, and co-authored a research paper on combinatorics published in The Australasian Journal of Combinatorics.
Agastsya Goel at the US Physics Team Camp 2024 at the University of Maryland, College Park
His shift to physics was a spark of curiosity that grew during the winter of 2023. While on a family trip to India, Agastya carried Kevin Zhou’s physics handouts and could often be found studying even during sightseeing sprees. That winter marked the beginning of an academic love affair with Physics that would lead him to the top of the world stage.
The joy of learning and living
Agastya has honed the ability to balance brilliance with balance. In his own words, “I had a super fun time at the US Physics Team Camp 2024 at the University of Maryland, College Park. I made many new friends and played Frisbee and tennis and, yes, first-time hands-on labs.”
The experience of being part of a community of like-minded young physicists was as valuable to him as the medals themselves. His days at camp were spent alternating between rigorous problem-solving sessions and tennis matches, or impromptu frisbee games on campus lawns.
Outside academics, Agastya finds joy in music, hiking, and stargazing. He plays both the guitar and piano, sings in his school’s choir, and is part of the varsity tennis team. When not solving equations, he can often be found in the Board Game Club or exploring new ideas through science and economics podcasts. His intellectual curiosity seems boundless, extending well beyond the classroom.
A family’s love for learning
Agastya’s father, Ashish Goel, hails from Uttar Pradesh, India. After topping the IIT-JEE in 1990 and earning a PhD at Stanford, Ashish built a career that bridged academia and industry contributing to algorithmic game theory, computational social science, and even Twitter’s monetisation framework.
At home, science wasn’t imposed but experienced. Long car rides turned into mini-seminars on logic and mathematics; family hikes became lessons in observation and inference. These early experiences instilled in Agastya both a deep respect for inquiry and an awareness of how beauty and logic intertwine in the natural world.
America’s youngest ambassadors of science
For the U.S. Physics Team, 2025 will be remembered as a year of unity and triumph. Competing against students from more than 80 countries, the team showcased not only academic excellence but also the diverse fabric of America, with majority of team members coming from immigrant families. Together, they embody the essence of a nation that continues to inspire the world’s best and brightest.
2025 International Physics Olympiad champions
A future of possibilities
As Agastya prepares for his senior year, the path ahead seems wide open. Whether his journey leads him to theoretical physics, computer science, or a hybrid of both, for now, he remains grounded as a young man who plays music, hikes, and looks up at the night sky with wonder. Yet somewhere in that wonder lies the next equation, the next idea, and perhaps the next discovery.
- Follow Agastsya Goel on LinkedIn
