Terence Tao, Australia's mathematics mastermind.
Credit: UCLA
SYDNEY, 23 August 2006: The Fields Medal is the most important international prize in mathematics - the arithmetic analogue of the Nobel Prize - and it's just been won for the first time by an Australian.
And he's only 31 years old.
Terence Tao is what one could unreservedly call a genius. His penchant for numbers was readily apparent even at an early age. Not only is he one of only two children to have ever scored over 700 on the Davidson's Study of Exceptional Talent maths test - while at the tender age of eight - but he is also the only individual to ever have won a gold medal in the International Maths Olympiad under the age of 13.
However, Tao's natural affinity for the abstract wasn't limited to any particular narrow fields, as is often the case with many maths masterminds. Instead, his analytical abilities were uncannily matched by an incredibly creative imagination, allowing him to link disparate thoughts and make huge leaps of intuition.
Professor Garth Gaudry, Director of the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM) at The University of Melbourne, who taught Terry Tao from the age of 12 at Flinders University, was at the awards ceremony.
"Terry Tao is a phenomenally creative mathematician whose ideas are having a profound impact across an unusually wide range of deep problems in mathematics. He richly deserves this award," he said.
"His ideas may well have unforeseen applications. For example, the theory of prime numbers and factorisation are the basis of some of the most important codes for the protection of information, including banking information. So it is intriguing to wonder where his work will eventually lead."
Professor Gaudry is referring to Tao's monumental discovery in 2004, along with colleague Professor Ben Green from Cambridge University, that there are an infinite number of arbitrary strings of prime numbers that are a constant distance apart.
Prime numbers are also known as the 'elements' of the natural numbers. Primes are any numbers that don't have any other factors aside from themselves and 1. All non-prime numbers can be defined as being the multiples of two or more primes - hence primes being the building blocks of the entire natural number line.
Primes exhibit a number of curious properties, such as occasional recurring patterns - called arithmetic progressions. One is 3, 5, 7, where the numbers differ by 2. Another is 109, 219, 329, 439, 549, where the primes differ by 110.
Tao and Green provided a proof that there are arbitrarily long strings of prime numbers that are a constant distance apart. They also gave ways of measuring how thickly spread such long strings are among the primes.
Since very large numbers, and their prime factors, are popular tools in encryption, Tao's work could have some huge implications in terms of information and security.
Tao, only barely into his 30s, is now Professor of Mathematics at UCLA, Los Angeles, a position he gained at the impressive age of 24. He graduated from Flinders University in Adelaide with a BSc Hons at age 16 and an MSc at age 17, both supervised by Professor Garth Gaudry. At 21 he gained a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Prior to winning the Fields Medal, he had won virtually every top international research prize in mathematics.
The Fields Medal is the most important international prize in the world of mathematics. The International Mathematical Union (IMU) awards them every four years at the ICM (International Congress of Mathematicians).
Between two and four Fields Medals can be awarded at each ICM, and only those mathematicians below the age of 40 are eligible to receive them. This is because they are meant to encourage future endeavour. They are typically awarded for a body of work, rather than a single isolated achievement.
This shows just how astounding Tao's achievement is, given he's nearly a decade shy of the prize's cut-off age and has been awarded for a broad body of work while only at the beginning of his career.
The medals themselves are gold-minted, and are named after the Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields (1863-1932). They were first awarded at the International Congress held in Oslo in 1936.
Other Fields Medal awards winners for 2006 were Russians Andrei Okounkov and Grigori Perelman and German Wendelin Werner. However, the reclusive and eccentric Perelman is reported to have turned down his award.
Other prizes awarded were the Nevanlinna Prize, issued to Jon Kleinberg. The Gauss Prize went to Kiyoshi Ito.
