The Australian-American mathematician Terence Tao, 47, was not jaded on March 21 when he received yet another prize celebrating his career: the great medal of the Academy of Sciences. However, there would be something. Since he was 11 years old, he has been accumulating honors. Bronze medal at the Mathematics Olympiad in 1986, then gold two years later, Salem Prize in 2000, Fields Medal in 2006, Crafoord Prize in 2012, Breakthrough Prize in 2015… And history does not say whether, at 2 years ago, when his parents caught him teaching older children to count, his classmates also praised him.
“He is probably the best living mathematician”slice Etienne Ghys, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, mathematician himself and regular columnist at the Monde. At the medal ceremony, he went further in his remarks about his fellow professor at the University of California, Los Angeles: « Il dominates the whole of mathematics when we used to say that it was no longer possible since Henri Poincaré or David Hilbert, at the beginning of the XXe century. » “He is a rock star of the discipline”smiles Timothy Gowers, another Fields medalist and professor at the College de France, invited to the ceremony, while his colleague has his picture taken alongside many young people who have come to listen to him.
The winner therefore savors these new laurels. “In the United States, we don’t have an equivalent event. Here we feel the attachment to tradition »he explains to Monde the next day, sitting in an 18th century basket sofae century. The day before, he had the pleasure of touching, in the library of the Academy, a mythical document: the last letter of the French prodigy Evariste Galois, written the day before his death, May 31, 1832, and considered as his mathematical testament. , rich in pioneering concepts. “It was moving because we felt the despair in his words”explains the researcher, who knows enough French to appreciate the manuscript.
“Brilliant and responsive”
He also knows what it means to write, he who has already published more than 300 research articles and 18 books, including the first at the age of 17 (a guide to solving the problems of the Olympiads). Before such an abundance, Etienne Ghys had difficulty in sweeping all the areas affected by his colleague. He listed more than a dozen, including number theory, in particular prime numbers, analysis, partial differential equations, group theory (created by Evariste Galois), combinatorics… “What I like least is algebra and topology. And let’s not talk about algebraic topology! »s’amuse Terence Tao.
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