That Guy! I Have Half His DNA!

My brother, Terry Tao (he’s the one stuffing his face; no, the other one; the other other one), has just been awarded a Fields Medal. Smart cookie, that kid. I tried to read his thesis once, and gave up around page 7. But really, his best achievement is fathering my favorite nephew, which got my folks off my back about getting married / having kids. For now.

Ladies, form an orderly queue…

Update (2006-09-12): Terry is also known as 陶哲軒. Theoretically, I am also known as 陶哲仁, but I don’t actually read or speak Chinese (I think my name loosely translates to something like Top Aussie Bloke). What this does mean is that there’s a bunch of blogs that mention my name and I don’t know what they’re saying. Creepy.

9 comments ↓

#1 Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen on 08.23.06 at 12:44 am

OMG. I know someone who’s brother got a Fields medal. Seriously cool. Actually totally blows my cool’o’meter of the scale!

Gongrats Nigel! You best be proud 🙂

PS: I’m a mathematician myself. Not anywhere close to getting a Fields medal. Not in this, or any other parallel, universe.

#2 Sigi on 08.23.06 at 10:33 am

oh my gosh, I read about this last night and wondered if…wow!!

this is fantastic news!!!!!!

#3 Richard Kimber on 08.23.06 at 11:04 am

That is awesome. I am sure there will be an orderly queue !!
Sounds like we need to tempt your brother to join Google too….

#4 jim on 08.23.06 at 11:45 am

congrats to your brother

#5 Parko on 08.23.06 at 4:30 pm

Congratulations to the Tao family. Being such a freak for Harmonic analysis and nonlinear partial differential equations i was very excited to hear that a leader in that field was honoured (wow i almost sound like i know what i’m talking about…….maybe)

Maybe he should be nominated as the South Australian nominee for Australian of the year. Surely he would be the biggest thing to come out of SA since………..??

Closing date for nominations is 28 August, so better get a move on.

#6 Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen on 08.23.06 at 4:34 pm

Anyway, there’s no doubt that you are the cooler brother… You founded deskbar-applet (bringing desktop bliss to hundreds of thousands of people) – after all this is just a Fields medal ;-P

#7 Nigel Tao on 08.23.06 at 10:26 pm

Yes, I used to be a mathematician, too. But software is more fun than partial differential equations. And it has more users. 🙂

And I still have 4 years (and 3 days) on ‘im – 4 years to get a Turing Award. My time starts… now!

#8 Wes on 08.24.06 at 7:14 am

Man, it’s not everyday you read about your friend’s brother on Slashdot!

You Tao’s rock. Why don’t you have a sister Nasty? lol.

I’m rocking Edinburgh, with Sam and Dougal. Woohoo!

bye!

Wes

#9 Caz on 09.01.06 at 8:55 am

How cute is that! I am assuming you are the one in the pale blue trackies.

I have just been rocking NYC with Simone and Gracie!

Anyway (as you will have guessed from my inarticulate telephone message), very exciting and congratulations to you and your family!

Caz