2010 Frederic Esser Nemmers Mathematics Prize Recipient
Congratulations to the 2010 Nemmers Mathematics Prize winner
Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
2010 Nemmers Prize in Mathematics Recipient
Terence Tao
For mathematics of astonishing breadth, depth and originality
Tao, a professor of mathematics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who has been dubbed the "Mozart of Math," has been awarded the ninth Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics "for mathematics of astonishing breadth, depth and originality." He is well known for a proof, in collaboration with British mathematician Ben J. Green, of the existence of arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of prime numbers (the Green-Tao theorem).
In 2006, he received a MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the genius award) and a Fields Medal, widely considered the top honor a mathematician 40 years of age or under can receive. Tao was awarded the Fields Medal for his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number theory. Tao was cited as "a supreme problem-solver whose spectacular work has had an impact across several mathematical areas...who combines sheer technical power and other-worldly ingenuity for hitting upon new ideas."
In 2007, Tao was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2008, he became a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences and, in 2009, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2010, he was the co-winner of the King Faisal International Prize in the field of science for his works in mathematics. A child prodigy, Tao started to learn calculus when he was 7, and when he was 20 earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He joined UCLA's faculty that year and was promoted to full professor at age 24.
