Terence Tao – “ The Greatest Mathematician Alive ”

Terence Tao – “ The Greatest Mathematician Alive ”

Exactly how smart can a human be ? Is there a limit to it ? Well if there is Terence Tao is certainly an exception.  Terence Chi Shen Tao is also known as Terry Tao. He is an Australian- American mathematician who has worked upon many topics of mathematics. Tao is right now working on harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, compressed sensing and analytic number theory.

Tao was fascinated by mathematics from a very young age. He loved mathematics from his childhood only and according to him he didn’t used to like other subjects. Once Terry’s mother was cleaning the window panes and he requested her to apply the detergent in the shape of numbers. When he was only two years old his parents discovered that he used to teach other children about numbers. He used to teach five year olds how to spell and add numbers. When he turned three he was admitted to school by his parents but soon he had to leave that school since the teachers had no idea how to teach someone that young. Later when Tao turned five he was admitted to Blackwood high school, Adelaide, south Australia. When Tao turned thirteen he was managing all his time between Blackwood high school and Flinders university.

He was taught by Garth Gaudry in Flinders university. On seeing Tao’s abilities and talent he was keen to meet Tao’s mother who had a degree in mathematics and science. Tao’s mother told Gaudry that she only motivates and encourages Tao. Tao likes to study alone on his own. She told him that Tao spends three to four hours with books after school.

Tao won a bronze medal in International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 1986, silver medal in 1987 and gold medal in 1988. Tao won a gold medal in IMO at the age of only thirteen. He was the youngest person to win a gold medal in the history of IMO. IMO consists a total of six questions. The whole exam is of nine hours, four and a half hours each day. Out of those six questions Tao had five of them right.

At the age of fourteen Tao used to spend all his time at Flinders university, he completed his  B.sc and M.sc from there only. At the age of twenty he completed his Ph.D. from Princeton University. At the age of twenty four he was appointed as a professor of mathematics at UCLA. In 2006 Tao was awarded by Fields medal which is regarded as mathematics’ closest analog to Nobel Prize ( since Nobel prize does not exists in mathematics ). Fields medal is only given once every four years so it is sometimes considered that Field’s medal is harder to get than the Nobel prize. At the age of thirty one Tao has written over eighty (80) research papers. Maybe these are the reasons why Tao is considered as the greatest  mathematician alive.