Terence Tao

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Terence Chi-Shen Tao (Chinese: 陶哲軒; Cantonese Yale: tòuh jit hīn; Pinyin: Táo Zhéxuān), is an Australian mathematician working primarily on harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, combinatorics, analytic number theory and representation theory. He is currently a professor of mathematics at UCLA. He was promoted to full professor at age 24.<ref>Terence Tao: The "Mozart of Math" www.college.ucla.edu, 9 November 2005. Retrieved 31 August 2006.</ref> In August 2006, he was awarded the Fields Medal for his contributions in mathematics.<ref>IMU Prizes 2006 29 August 2006</ref> The Fields Medal is widely viewed as the top honour a mathematician can receive. Just one month later, in September 2006, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

1 Personal life
2 Child prodigy
3 Research and awards
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Personal life

Tao was born July 17 1975, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Both Tao's parents are Han Chinese by ethnicity. His parents are first generation immigrants from Hong Kong to Australia.<ref>Wen Wei Po, Page A4, 24 August, 2006.</ref> His father Tao Xiangguo (Chinese: 陶象國; Cantonese Yale: tòuh zoeng gwok; Pinyin: Táo XiangGuo) is a pediatrician, and his mother, a BSc graduate from The University of Hong Kong, was formerly a secondary school teacher of Mathematics in Hong Kong. <ref>Oriental Daily, Page A29, 24 August, 2006.</ref>

His father told the press that at the age of two, during a family gathering, the younger Tao taught a 5-year-old child mathematics and English. When asked by his father why he knew numbers and letters, he said he learned them from Sesame Street.<ref>Apple Daily, Page A4, 24 August, 2006.</ref> He speaks Cantonese, but does not write Chinese.

He currently lives with his wife Laura Kim Tao and son William Kim Tao in Los Angeles, CA.

[edit] Child prodigy

Terence Tao exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age. Tao attended university 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).<ref>Radical acceleration in Australia: Terence Tao Gross, M. Retrieved 31 August 2006</ref> In 1986, 1987, and 1988, Tao was the youngest participant to date in the International Mathematical Olympiads, 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 medalist 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.<ref>It's prime time as numbers man Tao tops his Field Stephen Cauchi, 23 August 2006. Retrieved 31 August 2006.</ref> He joined UCLA's faculty that year.

[edit] Research and awards

He received the Salem Prize in 2000, the Bocher 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 Terence Tao released a preprint proving the existence of arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of prime numbers. 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 NewScientist<ref>NewScientist.com, Prestigious Fields Medals for mathematics awarded, 22 August, 2006.</ref> writes of his ability:

Such is Tao’s reputation that mathematicians now compete to interest him in their problems, and he is becoming a kind of Mr Fix-it for frustrated researchers. “If you're stuck on a problem, then one way out is to interest Terence Tao,” says Fefferman.