Terence Tao
Also known as Terry Tao
UCLA mathematician; Fields Medal 2006; writes on AI and machine-checked proofs.
At a glance
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Terence Tao is a professor of mathematics at UCLA.
- He works mainly in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, combinatorics and analytic number theory.
- With Ben Green he proved that the primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions, and he received the Fields Medal in 2006.
- A child prodigy from Adelaide, he took a PhD at Princeton at 21 and became a full professor at UCLA at 24.
- He has become a leading voice on AI and the Lean proof assistant in mathematical research, and keeps a long-running research blog, What's new.
Key facts
- Current role
- Professor, Department of Mathematics, UCLA1
- Born
- 17 July 1975, Adelaide, South Australia2
- Education
- BSc and MSc from Flinders University (1991, aged 16); PhD from Princeton (1996, under Elias Stein)2
- UCLA
- Joined the faculty in 1996; full professor in 1999, at 242
- Known for
- Green–Tao theorem (with Ben Green); compressed sensing (with Emmanuel Candès and Justin Romberg); the Erdős discrepancy problem (2015)2
- Honors
- Fields Medal and MacArthur Fellowship (2006); Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics and Royal Medal (2014); Companion of the Order of Australia (2026)2
- AI and proof
- Began learning Lean in late 2023; ran the Equational Theories Project from September 2024 to April 2025; lectured on "Mathematics in the Age of AI" at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians2
Links
Sources
Last checked against its sources today
Is something on this page wrong or out of date? Tell us
How recent
The line under a date fills as time passes: empty when new, then one equal share each for a day, a week, a month and a year. For episodes and other items it is full at 2 years; for "last checked", at a year. A striped line means the date is known only to the month or year.