Manuel Ansede in El País:
Terence Tao snorts and waves his hands dismissively when he hears that he is the most intelligent human being on the planet, according to a number of online rankings, including a recent one conducted by the BBC. He is, however, indisputably one of the best mathematicians in history. When he was two, his parents saw him teaching another five-year-old boy to count.
“That’s what my parents told me. I don’t remember this myself. They asked me who I had learned it from. I said, from Sesame Street,” says Tao, 49, who was born in the Australian city of Adelaide. When he was 11, he won a bronze medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. At 12, he took home silver. At 13, gold. At 21, he received his doctorate from Princeton University. At 24, he was already a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. And at 31, he won the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize in his discipline.
More here.
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