DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997                TAG: 9704180059

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E13  EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: GROOVEY SAPIEN 

SOURCE: BY RACHAEL WAGNER, HIGH SCHOOL CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   76 lines

CAPE HENRY SOPHOMORE IS MATH WHIZ

WHEN YOU enter Cape Henry Collegiate's honors calculus class, you see several seniors, a few juniors and . . . a sophomore? But wait, you think to yourself, sophomores don't take calculus.

They do when they can flex their brain muscles the way Bryden Cais can. Bryden's the first sophomore to take honors calculus in Cape Henry's 21-year history, said guidance counselor Arlene Ingram.

Not only does Bryden have notebooks full of equations and calculations but he also has written his own theorems and proofs, some of which were presented at a math conference in Seattle last August. Bryden also had a few others published in a math journal when he was 14.

Bryden doesn't study any of the more common romance languages like French, Spanish or Italian. But while he and his family lived in Japan from 1990 to 1992, he picked up a little Japanese.

He now takes Japanese III and speaks well enough to get by in everyday conversation.

But Bryden's not a nerd who sports a pocket protector. Bryden, who likes to wear military-style clothing, takes time to play on Cape Henry's soccer and baseball teams. He also likes to hang out at coffee houses. His favorite type of java is a quadruple espresso. It does exist, he says.

At home, prints of Salvador Dali paintings adorn his bedroom wall. Radios he built from scratch are also carefully placed throughout his room.

He once printed out the square root of two to 800,000 decimal places and hung it on his wall so he could memorize about 10 digits every night until he knew the whole thing by heart. This feat proved to be impossible, but only because he couldn't find strong enough staples to hold the paper up.

Name: Bryden Rudolph Cais

Date of birth: Nov. 23, 1980

Family: Bryden has one sister, Carly, 18, and his parents are Kirsten and Rudolf Cais.

School: Cape Henry Collegiate

Favorite music: Jimi Hendrix, Southeast Indian music and Tibetan monk chants

Favorite movie: ``A Clockwork Orange''

Favorite actress: Audrey Hepburn

Favorite book: ``Introduction to the Theory of Numbers'' by G.H. Hardy

Favorite food: Indian curry, sushi, shrimp pizza

Favorite restaurant: Tokyo Inn

Favorite sport: Cricket

Favorite season of the year: Winter in Antarctica or the rainy season in Burma

Favorite midnight snack: Milk and green tea ice cream.

Spare time: In the little free time that Bryden has, he goes thrift store shopping and does math for fun.

If you could take one thing with you to a desert island, what would it be? ``I would take a pen and paper, so that I could work on my math.''

If you could invite six people, living or dead, to dinner, whom would they be? ``I would invite Ravi Shankar, who is a cool musician; Chopin; Beet-hoven; and Jimi Hendrix. I would also invite Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy, who are both mathematicians.''

What are your prized possessions? ``My house, because it keeps me dry when it rains, and my math notebooks.''

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? ``I would change my eye color to either black or bright green.''

Who is your hero, the person you admire most? ``Srinivasa Ramanujan, because he did exactly what he wanted to and didn't let anything or anyone get in the way. He died doing what he loved best - math!''

What is your biggest accomplishment? ``Me - becoming who I am.''

What is your favorite quote? ``J'aime mieux tes levres que mes livres.'' (I like your lips better than my books.) Prevert, a French poet. MEMO: Rachael Wagner is a freshman at Cape Henry Collegiate. ILLUSTRATION: D. KEVIN ELLIOTT / The Virginian-Pilot

Bryden Cais is the first sophomore to take honors calculus in Cape

Henry's 21-year history. KEYWORDS: PROFILE

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