Terence Tao

“The accuracy of Wikipedia can be dodgy in some places, but in maths, it's really quite good.”

“What interests me is the connection between maths and the real world.”

“Most of what I do does not save lives.”

“Math education has changed over the years. In the 19th century, they taught spherical trigonometry because one of the biggest applications of mathematics was navigating the ocean. This is no longer so relevant.”

“I am still very fond of Australia, but my life is now in Los Angeles.”

“When I was seven or eight, whenever I was getting too rowdy at night, my parents would give me a maths workbook to work on to quieten me down.”

“There might be a hidden structure in pi that we simply haven't discovered.”

“For me, I guess the main motivation is the satisfaction of finally understanding some tricky mathematical concept or phenomenon and then explaining it to others.”

“Most students who take math classes aren't going to be mathematicians. They're going to be engineers, statisticians - in many ways, that's the more important mission of math education.”

“Talent is important, but how one develops and nurtures it is even more so.”

“When you're concentrating hard, hours can fly by, and it's just you and a math problem.”

“I don't have any magical ability. I look at a problem, play with it, work out a strategy.”

“I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world.”

“I always liked numbers.”

“I was never very good at school with... humanities... anything which was more a matter of opinion.”

“My life is more than just my work. I am a husband and a father and a proud citizen of two countries: my homeland of Australia and my adopted country here in the United States.”

“I tend to change research direction every few years or so.”

“I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.”

“I think one nice thing about mathematics is that we don't really have one prize that dominates all the others, like the Nobel prizes.”

“I have been lucky to find very good collaborators who have taught me a lot, have introduced me to several new fields of mathematics, or have shown me new insights.”