Australian Wins Highest International Honour in Mathematics

Terence receiving the Fields Medal from King Juan Carlos of Spain, (click image to enlarge)

The Fields Medal, considered to be the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, was today awarded to Professor Terence Tao. This is the first time an Australian has won this very prestigious award.

The Fields Medal is the highest international scientific award for mathematicians and is considered to be "The Nobel Prize of Mathematics". There is no category for Mathematics in the Nobel structure. It is awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union at the International Congress of Mathematicians to a candidate no older than 40. Professor Tao is 31 years old. He was presented with his medal this morning, (Central European Summer Time), by His Majesty, King Juan Carlos I of Spain at the Congress currently being held in Madrid, attended by some 4000 mathematicians from all over the world.

Intended to recognise exceptional achievement by young mathematicians, the Fields Medal is generally awarded for a body of work rather than for a single, isolated research result.

Terry Tao has made spectacular breakthroughs in an extraordinarily wide variety of very difficult problems, including the understanding of the very delicate behaviour of complicated equations that describe wave motion in various physical media. His work applies to the way that light can interact with itself when transmitted in a fibre-optic cable. His most famous recent discovery (in collaboration with Professor Ben Green of Cambridge University) concerns prime numbers. Prime numbers are familiar to all school children. Since at least the 18th century, mathematicians have tried to discover whether it is possible to find long strings of prime numbers that are a constant distance apart. These are called arithmetic progressions of primes. For example, 3, 5, 7 is an arithmetic progression of length 3, where the numbers differ by 2. The longest known string, discovered in 2004, shortly before the work of Tao and Green, contains 23 primes, starting at 56211383760397 and going up in jumps of 44546738095860.

Tao and Green proved 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. Their work may have implications for possible new methods of encryption and security of information.

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."

Terry Tao is now Professor of Mathematics at UCLA, Los Angeles, USA, a position he gained at the age of 24. A gifted student from a very early age, he started taking high school classes when he was only 8 years old. At age 11, he was studying calculus and winning international mathematics competitions. By age 12, he was studying mathematics normally regarded as third year university material and by 14, the most challenging postgraduate material. 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.

"I began teaching Terry Tao when he was only 12 years old," said Garth Gaudry. " Even at that age, he exhibited stunning insight and creativity. Discovering new mathematics was such an enjoyable adventure for Terry. To be Terry's teacher was, for me, the privilege of a lifetime."

About the Fields Medal The Fields Medals are 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).

Andrei Okounkov, Wendelin Werner and Terence Tao at the award ceremony. (click image to enlarge)

Between two and four Fields Medals can be awarded at each ICM, and only those mathematicians below the age of 40 (on January 1st of the year in which the Congress is held) 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.

The medals, gold-minted, are named after the Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields (1863-1932) and were first awarded at the International Congress held in Oslo in 1936.

The obverse of the medals shows Archimedes facing right and the motto "Transire Suum Pectus Mundoque Potir": "To transcend one's spirit and to take hold of (to master) the world". On the reverse side, also in Latin, the inscription "The mathematicians having congregated from the whole world awarded (this medal) because of outstanding writings". The name of the Medallist is engraved on the rim of the medal.

Web Links For Further Information: For information about the Fields Medial, go to: International Mathematical Union.

For further information about the Terry Tao, go to: University of California, or the wikipedia link.

Article source (Citation)
Extensive article in The Australian
Article in Sydney Morning Herald
Article in The Age
A view from UCLA
(Posted 22 August 2006)

Terence in front of the AMSI/AustMS stand. (click image to enlarge)

Terence with the Ambassador. (click image to enlarge)

Picture (enhanced) of Terence's medal. (click image to enlarge)