Terence "Terry" Chi-Shen Tao FRS (simplified Chinese: 陶哲轩; traditional Chinese: 陶哲軒) (born 17 July 1975, Adelaide), is an Australian 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. He was one of the recipients of the 2006 Fields Medal.
Tao was a child prodigy, one of the subjects in the longitudinal research on exceptionally gifted children by education researcher Miraca Gross. His father told the press that at the age of two, during a family gathering, Tao attempted to teach a 5-year-old child arithmetic and English.
According to Smithsonian Online Magazine, Tao could carry out basic 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 cannot write Chinese.
According to Smithsonian Online Magazine, Tao could carry out basic 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 cannot write Chinese.
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 (besides Lenhard Ng) 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 remains the youngest winner of each of the three medals in the olympiad's history winning the gold medal when he barely turned thirteen.
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 Ph.D. at the age of 20. 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 speaks Cantonese. His parents are first generation immigrants from Hong Kong to Australia.
His father, Billy Tao (Chinese: 陶象國; pinyin: Táo Xià ngguó; Cantonese Yale: tòuh jeuhng gwok) 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.
Tao has two brothers living in Australia, both of whom represented Australia at the International Mathematical Olympiad. Nigel Tao is part of the team at Google Australia that created Google Wave. Trevor Tao has a double degree in maths and music and will soon be featured in a book on autistic savants.
Tao, his wife Laura (an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), their son and daughter live in Los Angeles, California.
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