Academy corresponding member Professor Terence Tao is one of five researchers to win an inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics.
The prize is worth $3 million to each recipient and recognises recent achievements in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics. It was established in 2013 and funded by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Tao, currently a professor of mathematics at University of California, Los Angeles, is the youngest member ever to be elected to the Academy. A child prodigy, he was just 20 when he earned his doctorate from Princeton University.
The prize, announced earlier this week, comes after a long list of other honours, including the prestigious Fields Medal which he won in 2006.
He shares the prize with Simon Donaldson of New York’s Stony Brook University and Imperial College London; Maxim Konstsevich of France’s Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques; Jacob Lurie of Harvard University; and Richard Taylor of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Photo credit: UCLA/Reed Hutchinson
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