Once a genius, always a genius.
And Akshay Venkatesh, an Indian-born Australian mathematician has proved this by winning the prestigious Fields medal, also known as the Nobel prize for mathematics.
The Fields medals are awarded every four years to the most promising mathematicians under the age of 40. Venkatesh, a 36-year-old New Delhi born mathematician is one of the four winners this year.
He was honoured with the award at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro. Each winner receives a cash prize of Canadian Dollar 15,000.
He moved to Perth, Australia with his parents at an age of two and has been winning awards and accolades since his school days. He won medals in International Physics and Math Olympiads at an age of just 11 years.
Venkatesh also became the youngest student to be accepted into the University of Western Australia when he was just 13 years old. He graduated with first-class honours in Pure Mathematics at 16, again the youngest to do so.
He completed his PhD at an age of just 20. Since then, he has gone from holding a post-doctoral position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to becoming a Clay Research Fellow and, now is a professor at Stanford University.
His research has been awarded from time to time. He has worked at the highest level in number theory, arithmetic geometry, topology, automorphic forms and ergodic theory, besides winning a host of other prestigious awards like the Ostrowski Prize, the Infosys Prize, the Salem Prize and the Sastra Ramanujan Prize.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Venkatesh said that doing math gave him a feeling of transcendence. He also said:
A lot of the time when you do math, you’re stuck, but at the same time there are all these moments where you feel privileged that you get to work with it.