Childhood
A
child prodigy,
[18] Tao exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age, attending university-level mathematics courses at the age of 9. He is one of only two children in the history of the Johns Hopkins'
Study of Exceptional Talent program to have achieved a score of 700 or greater on the
SAT math section while just eight years old; Tao scored a 760.
[19][20] Julian Stanley, Director of the
Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, stated that he had the greatest mathematical reasoning ability he had found in years of intensive searching.
[21] Tao was the
youngest participant to date in the
International Mathematical Olympiad, first competing at the age of ten; in 1986, 1987, and 1988, he won a bronze, silver, and gold medal, respectively. He remains the youngest winner of each of the three medals in the Olympiad's history, having won the gold medal at the age of 13 in 1988.
[22]
Career
Tao (second from left) with UCLA undergraduate students in 2021
At age 14, Tao attended the
Research Science Institute, a summer program for secondary students. In 1991, he received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the age of 16 from
Flinders University under the direction of Garth Gaudry.
[23] In 1992, he won a Postgraduate
Fulbright Scholarship to undertake research in mathematics at
Princeton University in the United States. From 1992 to 1996, Tao was a graduate student at Princeton University under the direction of
Elias Stein, receiving his PhD at the age of 21.
[23] In 1996, he joined the faculty of the
University of California, Los Angeles. In 1999, when he was 24, he was promoted to full professor at UCLA and remains the youngest person ever appointed to that rank by the institution.
[23]
