Everything about Terence Tao totally explained
Terence Chi-Shen Tao FRS (born
July 17,
1975,
Adelaide,
South Australia) is an
Australian mathematician working primarily on
harmonic analysis,
partial differential equations,
combinatorics,
analytic number theory and
representation theory. His single most famous result is a proof, in joint work with British mathematician
Ben J. Green, that there exist arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of prime numbers. Tao is currently a professor of mathematics at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
In August 2006, he was awarded the
Fields Medal. Just one month later, in September 2006, he was awarded a
MacArthur Fellowship. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society on
May 18,
2007.
Personal life
Tao was a
child prodigy. When he was 24, he was promoted to to full professor at UCLA and remains the youngest person ever appointed to that rank by the institution. Both of his parents are
Cantonese Chinese by ethnicity. His parents are first generation immigrants from
Hong Kong to
Australia. His father, Billy Tao (Chinese name Xiangguo ;
Cantonese Yale: tòuh jeuhng gwok;
Pinyin: Táo Xiàngguó) is a pediatrician, and his mother is a Physics and Mathematics graduate from
The University of Hong Kong, formerly a secondary school teacher of
Mathematics in
Hong Kong. She was reportedly also an exceptional mathematician.
His father told the press that at the age of two, during a family gathering, the infant Tao taught a 5-year-old child
mathematics and
English. According to Smithsonian Online Magazine, Tao taught himself arithmetic by the age of two. When asked by his father how he knew numbers and letters, he said he learned them from
Sesame Street. Aside from English, Tao speaks
Cantonese, but doesn't write
Chinese. He currently lives with his wife and son in
Los Angeles,
California. He has two brothers.
Child prodigy
Tao exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age, attending university level mathematics courses at the age of nine. He is one of only two children in the history of the Johns Hopkins'
Study of Exceptional Talent program to have achieved a score of 700 or greater on the SAT math section while just 8 years old (he scored a 760). In 1986, 1987, and 1988, Tao was the youngest participant to date in the
International Mathematical Olympiad, first competing at the age of ten, winning a bronze, silver, and gold medal respectively. He won the gold medal when he just turned thirteen and remains the youngest gold medallist in the tournament's history. At age 14, Tao attended the
Research Science Institute. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees (at the age of 17) from
Flinders University under Garth Gaudry. In 1992 he won a
Fulbright Scholarship to undertake postgraduate study in the
United States. From 1992 to 1996, Tao was a graduate student at
Princeton University under the direction of
Elias Stein, receiving his
Ph.D. at the age of 20. He joined the faculty at the
University of California, Los Angeles in 1996.
Research and awards
He received the
Salem Prize in 2000, the
Bôcher Prize in 2002, and the
Clay Research Award in 2003, for his contributions to analysis including work on the
Kakeya conjecture and
wave maps. In 2005 he received the
American Mathematical Society's Levi L. Conant Prize with Allen Knutson, and in 2006 he was awarded the
SASTRA Ramanujan Prize.
In 2004,
Ben Green and Tao released a preprint proving what is now known as the
Green-Tao theorem. This theorem states that there are arbitrarily long
arithmetic progressions of
prime numbers. The
New York Times described it this way: For this and other work, he was awarded the
Australian Mathematical Society Medal.
In 2006, at the 25th
International Congress of Mathematicians in
Madrid, he became one of the youngest, the first Australian, and the first UCLA faculty member ever to be awarded a
Fields Medal. An article by
New Scientist writes of his ability:
Australian of the Year in 2007.
In 2008 Tao received the
Alan T. Waterman Award, which recognizes an early career scientist for outstanding contributions in their field. In addition to a medal, Waterman awardees also receive a $500,000 grant for advanced research.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Terence Tao'.
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