Math Medal Awarded

Terence Tao, a UCLA professor who was a child prodigy in calculus and earned a doctorate when he was only 20, on Tuesday was awarded one of four Fields Medals -- an international prize considered the Nobel for mathematics.

The Australian-born Tao, 31, was in Madrid to receive the honor, given out every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians to candidates no older than 40.

The group cited him as “a supreme problem-solver whose spectacular work has had an impact across several mathematical areas.” He has “a startlingly natural point of view that leaves other mathematicians wondering, ‘Why didn’t anyone see that before?’ ”

The ceremony attracted unusual attention because one winner -- Grigori Perelman, a reclusive Russian -- declined to attend and refused the honors presented by King Juan Carlos of Spain. The other recipients were Andrei Okounkov of Princeton University and Wendelin Werner of France’s University of Paris-Sud.

Tao, who could not be reached for comment, won prizes in international math contests when he was 11 and graduated from Flinders University in Adelaide at 16. He received a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton in 1996, joined UCLA’s faculty that year and, in what academics described as an astonishing achievement, became a full, tenured professor at 24. He is the first UCLA faculty member to win a Fields Medal.

“He can rekindle practically anyone’s passion for math,” said fellow UCLA math professor James Ralston, a former department chairman.

John Garnett, another UCLA math professor and former department chairman, said Tao’s work is so admired around the world that “there would have been an uproar in the mathematical community if he had not won it this time.”

Tao is involved in several areas of mathematics, including harmonic analysis, an advanced form of calculus that uses physics equations. His research, with British mathematician Ben Green, on the lengths of arithmetic progressions in prime numbers showed “great originality and insight,” the Fields citation said.

And unlike the stereotype of prodigies as socially awkward, Tao “works well with other people. He’s a gentleman,” Garnett said. Tao is married to Laura Kim, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, with whom he has a 3-year-old son.

Tao told a UCLA campus publication last year that he planned strategies for math challenges before tackling them directly. “It’s not about being smart or even fast,” he said. “It’s like climbing a cliff: If you’re very strong and quick and have a lot of rope, it helps, but you need to devise a good route to get up there.”

The medal, named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields, was first awarded in 1936. Though it is likened to the Nobel Prize, which does not have a math category, the Fields Medal comes with a cash award of about $13,400. A Nobel Prize can be as much as $1.3 million.