millbank Posted August 25, 2006 Share Posted August 25, 2006 Boy Genius At eight, he scored better than 99 per cent of 17-year-old prospective university students on an international aptitude test for mathematics. The Adelaide-born prodigy was appointed a professor at 24, and now, at 31, has become the first Australian to win a Fields Medal, the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel prize. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dean Posted August 25, 2006 Share Posted August 25, 2006 Baby genius: I know you're a youtube addict, milli. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckeyemike Posted August 25, 2006 Share Posted August 25, 2006 Too bad Doogie Howser's not still on TV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dib Posted August 25, 2006 Share Posted August 25, 2006 I wonder, growing up, how many times they stole his lunch money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
millbank Posted August 25, 2006 Author Share Posted August 25, 2006 Terence Tao A little more Tao's parents were first generation immigrants from Hong Kong . His father (Chinese: 陶象國; Cantonese Yale: tòuh zoeng gwok; Hanyu Pinyin: Táo XiangGuo) is a medical doctor, and his mother, a BSc graduate from The University of Hong Kong, was formerly a secondary school teacher of Mathematics in Hong Kong. Both of his younger brothers, (Chinese: 哲淵; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhe Yuan) and (Chinese: 哲仁; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhe ren), are famous in Adelaide for their intelligence . Professor Tao's mother, Grace, said she and her husband had simply helped all three of their highly talented sons to follow their passions when young. In Terry's case, this meant ferrying him between classes at primary school, high school and university. "He just loves maths. His mind is always thinking about problems," Mrs Tao said Tao attended university at the age of nine. His father told the press that at the age of two, the baby Tao taught in a family gathering a 5-year-old kid counting and spelling. When asked by his father why he knew numbers and letters, he said he learnt them from Sesame Street . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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