Terence Chi-Shen Tao: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

Terence Chi-Shen Tao (Chinese: 陶哲軒; pinyin: Táo Zhéxuān; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006 for his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis, and additive number theory. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences.

Tao was born to Chinese immigrant parents and raised in Adelaide, South Australia. Tao won the Fields Medal in 2006 and won the Royal Medal and Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014, and is a 2006 MacArthur Fellow. Tao has been the author or co-author of over three hundred research papers, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest living mathematicians.

Tao's published research includes topics in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, probability theory, compressed sensing, and analytic number theory.