From Sesame Street to the Mozart of maths – meet an Aussie genius

When Terence Tao went quiet at a dinner party when he was just two, his mum and dad found him using number blocks to teach older kids to count.

The little boy said he’d learned by watching Sesame Street on television and it was the first clue Grace and Billy Tao had that their son had a remarkable mind.

To them, he was their firstborn: little Terry, a kid from Adelaide with a cheeky grin and shiny black hair.

But he would go on to become many other things to the rest of the world, and has been called the Mozart* of maths, the smartest person alive, Dr Tao, a Fields Medallist*, teacher, mentor and even genius.

The word “genius” made Dr Tao squirm in this interview – but he has an IQ* of around 230 and at just 24, he became the youngest ever professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Just three years after learning to count while watching Big Bird and Count Dracula in his family’s lounge room in the late 1970s, Terence finished the primary school maths curriculum at age five.

He was taught by his mother, a teacher in Hong Kong prior to emigrating* to Australia before Terence and his brothers were born.

He skipped multiple grades at Bellevue Heights Primary School, took Year 11 maths classes at age seven, and began high school full-time at eight.

A photo published in the Adelaide Advertiser in 1983 shows the tiny figure in a classroom at Blackwood High School, kneeling on his seat to see the chalkboard, surrounded by students twice his age and height.

The headline reads: “Tiny Terence, 7, is a high school whiz”.

“When I was too rowdy as a kid, my parents would give me a math workbook to calm me down,” he said.

“I struggled a lot with fuzzy, undefined tasks, like in English class, we were asked to write something about our home and I didn’t know what to do. I just wrote a list of all the rooms in the house and the contents of each room.”

By nine, he was taking a third of his classes at Flinders University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with Honours at 16, before receiving his Masters at 17.

Encouraged by an adviser to study abroad, Terence moved to the United States where he undertook his PhD under adviser and renowned mathematician Elias Stein at Princeton University.

Dr Tao still comes home to Australia for holidays with wife Laura, daughter Madeleine, 13, and son William, 22, where he swims at Glenelg Beach and eats Burger Rings – although they don’t taste as good as he remembers from childhood.

Maths has long been quite a solitary field, but Dr Tao is working on changing that.

“Increasingly I’m interested in all these new technologies like AI, but also ways to bring together crowds of people through the internet to work on math problems, how to change the way we do mathematics,” he said.

“I’m running a project right now proving some new theorems* with 50 other people, usually we only collaborate with four or five other scientists,” Dr Tao said.

He also believes scientists should help create a responsible AI culture.

“(AI) is still just like working with a really enthusiastic, but incompetent intern, very eager to try stuff but always making so many mistakes, and you have to clean up … after the mess,” he said.

“But that’s just how it is today. It’s getting better … and at some point, it will crossover and it will be easier when I do calculations to just start by talking to an AI.”

Despite his glowing career report card, Dr Tao isn’t good at everything.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear my singing,” he said. “My handwriting, anything that involves arts and crafts, I’m no good at.”

Skimming Wikipedia to keep up to date with movies everyone else is talking about, Dr Tao said his hobbies, “have kind of been squeezed out by time constraints”.

“I used to like watching anime and playing badminton (and) I still ride my bike,” he said.

POLL

GLOSSARY

• Mozart: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) was an Austrian composer, child prodigy and prolific musical genius
• Fields Medallist: The Fields Medal is awarded every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians and recognises outstanding mathematical achievement
• emigrating: leaving a country permanently and go to live in another one
• theorems: mathematical statements that can be verified using proofs
• incompetent: unskilled, lacking qualifications and ability, incapable
• intern: an advanced student or a recent graduate getting practical, supervised training

EXTRA READING

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Good at maths equals good with money

Gaming and sport could restore maths mojo

QUICK QUIZ

1. How old was Terence Tao when his parents first found him teaching maths to older kids?
2. How old was Terence when he finished primary school maths?
3. What is Dr Tao’s estimated IQ?
4. What classic Aussie snack does Dr Tao enjoy when he is home visiting SA?
5. How old was Dr Tao when he received his Masters degree?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Ways to be smart
Dr Tao may be considered a maths genius, but even he admits that he is not good at everything! There are many different ways to be smart or talented and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Work with a partner to brainstorm all the ways that a person can be smart. Then write a shared definition for what the word “smart” means to you.

Time: allow 20 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social Capability

2. Extension
If you could choose one area of life in which to be considered a genius, explain what you would choose and why.

Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English

VCOP ACTIVITY
Punctuation thief
Pick a paragraph from the article, or about three sentences together if that’s easier, and rewrite it without the punctuation. At the bottom of the page write a list of all the punctuation you stole and in the order you stole it. For example: C , . C .

Then swap your book with another person and see if they can work out where the punctuation needs to be restored.

Make it easier: Underline where you stole the punctuation from but don’t put the list at the bottom in order.

Make it harder:

Don’t put the punctuation in order at the bottom.

Underline where you took the punctuation from, but don’t tell them what pieces you took.

Just tell them how many pieces you took, but not what they are.

Don’t give them any clues!