Terence Tao

Terence Chi-Shen Tao

Tao at March 2006 Erdős Memorial Conference in Memphis, Tennessee
Born 17 July 1975
Adelaide, South Australia
Residence Los Angeles, California
Nationality Australian[1]
United States[1]
Fields Mathematics
Institutions University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Alma mater Flinders University
Princeton University
Doctoral advisor Elias M. Stein
Known for Green–Tao theorem
Tao's inequality
Kakeya conjecture
Notable awards

Terence "Terry" Chi-Shen Tao FAA FRS (simplified Chinese: 陶哲轩; traditional Chinese: 陶哲軒; pinyin: Táo Zhéxuān) (born 17 July 1975, Adelaide), is an Australian-born Chinese American mathematician working in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, additive combinatorics, ergodic Ramsey theory, random matrix theory, and analytic number theory. He currently holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Tao was a co-recipient of the 2006 Fields Medal and the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics.

Personal life

Tao exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age, attending university level mathematics courses at the age of nine. He and Lenhard Ng are the 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 9 years old. Tao scored a 760.[2] Also at the age of 8, Tao began to teach high school calculus at Garfield High School after attending calculus courses when he was only 7 years old. 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.

Tao and Paul Erdős in 1985

He remains the youngest winner of each of the three medals in the Olympiad's history, winning the gold medal shortly after his thirteenth birthday. At age 14, Tao attended the Research Science Institute. When he was 15 he published his first assistant paper. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees (at the age of 16) 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 PhD at the age of 21.[3] He joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996. When he was 24, he was promoted to full professor at UCLA and remains the youngest person ever appointed to that rank by the institution.

Tao's father was born and grew up in Shanghai, and Tao's mother is Cantonese by ethnicity.[4] His parents are first generation immigrants from Hong Kong to Australia.[5] His father, Billy Tao (Chinese: 陶象國; pinyin: Táo Xiàngguó) is a pediatrician, and his mother, Grace Tao, is a physics and mathematics graduate from the University of Hong Kong, formerly a secondary school teacher of mathematics in Hong Kong.[6]

Tao has two brothers living in Australia, both of whom represented Australia at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Tao, his wife Laura (an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory),[8] their son, and their daughter live in Los Angeles, California.

Research and awards

Tao has won numerous honors and awards.[9] He received the Salem Prize in 2000, the Bôcher Memorial 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:[10][11]

“ In 2004, Dr. Tao, along with Ben Green, a mathematician now at the University of Cambridge in England, solved a problem related to the Twin Prime Conjecture by looking at prime number progressions—series of numbers equally spaced. (For example, 3, 7 and 11 constitute a progression of prime numbers with a spacing of 4; the next number in the sequence, 15, is not prime.) Dr. Tao and Dr. Green proved that it is always possible to find, somewhere in the infinity of integers, a progression of prime numbers of equal spacing and any length. ”

For this and other work Tao was awarded the Australian Mathematical Society Medal of 2004.

Tao in his UCLA office, 2006

In August 2006, at the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, he became one of the youngest persons, the first Australian, and the first UCLA faculty member ever to be awarded a Fields Medal.[12][13] An article by New Scientist[14] 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 Charles Fefferman [professor of mathematics at Princeton University].[12] ”

Tao was a finalist to become Australian of the Year in 2007.[15] He is a corresponding member of the Australian Academy of Science, and in 2007 was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.[16][17] In the same year Tao also published Tao's inequality,[18] an extension to the Szemerédi regularity lemma in the field of information theory.

In April 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.[19]

In December 2008, he was named the Lars Onsager lecturer[20] of 2008, for "his combination of mathematical depth, width and volume in a manner unprecedented in contemporary mathematics". He was presented the Onsager Medal, and held his Lars Onsager lecture entitled "Structure and randomness in the prime numbers"[21] at NTNU, Norway.

Tao was also elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.[22]

In 2010, he received the King Faisal International Prize jointly with Enrico Bombieri.[23] Also in 2010, he was awarded the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics[24] and the Polya Prize (SIAM).[25] Tao and Van H. Vu solved the circular law conjecture.

Tao also made contributions to the study of the Erdős–Straus conjecture in 2011 by showing that the number of solutions to the Erdős–Straus equation increases polylogarithmically as n tends to infinity.

In 2012 he and Jean Bourgain received the Crafoord Prize in Mathematics from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[26][27] Also, in 2012, he was selected as a Simons Investigator.[28] He proved that every odd integer greater than 1 is the sum of at most five primes.[29]

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Australian Academy of Sciences (Corresponding Member), the National Academy of Sciences (Foreign member), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Mathematical Society.[30] In 2006, he received the Fields Medal "for his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number theory", and in 2006, he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship. He has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Popular Science, and many other media outlets.[31]

As of 2013 Tao has published over 250 research papers and 17 books.[32] He has an Erdős number of 2. [33]

In 2014 Tao received a CTY Distinguished Alumni Honor from Johns Hopkins Center for Gifted and Talented Youth in front of 963 attendees in 8th and 9th grade that are in the same program that Tao graduated from.

Notable awards

Book publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Vitae and Bibliography for Terence Tao". 12 Oct 2009. Retrieved 2010-01-21.
  2. ↑ Radical acceleration in Australia: Terence Tao
  3. ↑ It's prime time as numbers man Tao tops his Field Stephen Cauchi, 23 August 2006. Retrieved 31 August 2006.
  4. ↑ "天才数学家陶哲轩 (Mathematical Genius Terence Tao)" (in Chinese). Sina.com. 2007-April-02 17:23. Retrieved 16 May 2010. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ↑ Wen Wei Po, Page A4, 24 August 2006.
  6. ↑ Oriental Daily, Page A29, 24 August 2006.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Nigel makes Waves: Google's bid to overthrow email, Asher Moses, Sydney Morning Herald, 2009-10-02
  8. ↑ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tao.html
  9. ↑ http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html
  10. ↑ Kenneth Chang (13 March 2007). "Journeys to the Distant Fields of Prime". New York Times.
  11. ↑ "Corrections: For the Record". New York Times. 13 March 2007.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "2006 Fields Medals awarded" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society (American Mathematical Society) 53 (9): 1037–1044. October 2006.
  13. ↑ "Reclusive Russian turns down math world's highest honour". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). 22 August 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-26.
  14. ↑ NewScientist.com, Prestigious Fields Medals for mathematics awarded, 22 August 2006.
  15. ↑ National Australia Day Committee, 2007 Australian of the Year Finalists. Retrieved 2013-03-12.
  16. ↑ Annual report, Australian Academy of Science, 2008.
  17. ↑ Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society, retrieved 2010-06-09.
  18. ↑ http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/ahlswede/homepage/public/217.pdf
  19. ↑ National Science Foundation, Alan T. Waterman Award. Retrieved 2008-04-18.
  20. ↑ http://www.ntnu.no/imf/onsager
  21. ↑ NTNU's Onsager Lecture, by Terence Tao on YouTube
  22. ↑ "Alphabetical Index of Active AAAS Members" (PDF). amacad.org. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
    His 2009 induction ceremony is here.
  23. ↑ King Faisal Foundation – retrieved 2010-01-11.
  24. ↑ Major math and science awards announced
  25. ↑ http://www.siam.org/prizes/sponsored/polya.php
  26. ↑ "The Crafoord Prize in Mathematics 2012 and The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy 2012". Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 19 January 2012. Retrieved 2014-11-13.
  27. ↑ 4 Scholars Win Crafoord Prizes in Astronomy and Math
  28. ↑ "Simons Investigators 2012". Simons Foundation. Retrieved 2013-10-28.
  29. ↑ Tao, Terence (2012). "Every odd number greater than 1 is the sum of at most five primes". arXiv:1201.6656 [math.NT].
  30. ↑ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2013-08-25.
  31. ↑ http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/media.html
  32. ↑ http://ams.math.uni-bielefeld.de/mathscinet/search/publications.html?pg1=IID&s1=361755
  33. ↑ http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/whoami.html
  34. ↑ http://mathisaac.org/Award.html
  35. ↑ http://www.cee.org/news/cee-presents-dr-terence-tao-joseph-i-lieberman-award-his-significant-contribution-mathematics
  36. ↑ Solving Mathematical Problems: A Personal Perspective, Oxford University Press 2006

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