Number cruncher Tao waves maths flag for Australia

Madrid - Australian prodigy Terence Tao, aged just 31, was in elevated company Tuesday as he won the mathematics world's version of a Nobel prize, the Fields Medal, along with Russian recluse Grigory Perelman, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Russian Andrei Okunkov.

Tao, Adelaide-born but based at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA), was lauded for contributions to harmonic analysis and numerical theory.

His medal is another claim to fame for a brilliant academic who earned his PhD from Princeton University at 21 and was full professor of mathematics at UCLA at 24.

Asked why he devoted himself to pushing the boundaries of the discipline, Tao said: "Because it's fun."

"What interests me is the connection between maths and the real world," he said, following an awards ceremony presided by Spain's King Juan Carlos on the opening day of the 25th annual International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid.

Dr Alf van der Poorten, emeritus professor of mathematics at the Sydney Centre for Number Theory Research, saluted Tao's achievement.

"It's a wonderful thing for Australian mathematics. He was a young genius and (Australia) had people in place to look after him. He comes back quite regularly," van der Poorten told AFP.

"Australia is really quite strong at world level," said the professor, adding that a clutch of other gifted young mathematicians down under were hoping to follow in Tao's footsteps.

John Garnett, former UCLA college chair of mathematics, recently placed Tao on a level with Mozart -- "except without Mozart's personality problems" -- and noted that "mathematics just flows out of him."

Tao became the first UCLA winner of the Fields Medal for his work on a branch of maths which uses equations from physics in the theoretical field of harmonic analysis -- a discipline that focuses on acoustic wave frequencies.

Other fields in which he specialises include algebraic geometry and number theory, while he has also been involved in extensive research on prime numbers based on theories first put forward more than two millennia ago by the Greek mathematician Euclid.

Tao says he likes to split up problems into little problems and once explained that "if I experiment enough, I get a deeper understanding."

Agence France Presse