Australian-born mathematics genius Terence Tao has been unmoved by offers to work in finance, preferring the freedom of academia.
The Adelaide-born professor was studying university-level maths at the age of nine. He completed his PhD in mathematics at Princeton at 20 and at 31 he was awarded the Fields Medal, regarded as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics”.
“In academia you get a lot of freedom to work on your own research. You choose the type of problem you work on,” he told“If I worked for a hedge fund they would ask me to solve a very specific problem that would make them money. It didn’t really appeal to me.“I have a comfortable life. I think I have everything I need from my job and I feel like the stuff I do can actually help people.”
“What I was trying to do in this MasterClass was actually demonstrate the way mathematicians think about problems is actually a natural extension of the way people really think.”Professor Tao loved numbers, puzzles and games from an early age. Once when he was given an English assignment to write about his home, he took a literal approach and listed all the items in each room of his house.
“It turned out that this problem can be converted into a maths problem by solving a whole bunch of equations,” Professor Tao said.Advance Global Australians chief executive Johanna Pitman said the awards were an opportunity to spotlight and celebrate the achievements of the Australian diaspora.
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