Math genius Tao Zhexuan has been recognized as “the person with the highest IQ” with an IQ of 230, much higher than Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking. He went to college at 14, got his doctorate at 17, and became the youngest professor in UCLA’s history at 24. This article on Tao Zhexuan’s growth experience.
Who is the smartest person in the world?


Some media reports may point to a Chinese male, Tao Zhexuan. He is said to be considered “the most intelligent person in the world” and when tested by Professor Minaka Gross of the University of New South Wales,
He has an IQ of 230, much higher than Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.


tao
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And Tao Zhexuan every step of the growth experience, but also constantly confirm his genius name is not too prestigious


At the age of 10, 11 and 12, she participated in international Mathematical Olympiad and won bronze medal, silver medal and gold medal respectively. She was the youngest Olympic gold medalist in her grade, and this record has been maintained till now.


At the age of 14, HE entered Flinders University in Australia, where he got his bachelor’s degree in two years and his master’s degree in one year.


At the age of 17, he entered Princeton University in the United States for his PhD. At the age of 21, he graduated with his PhD. At the age of 24, he became the youngest professor in the history of UCLA.


At the age of 31, he received the MacArthur Foundation s Genius Grant and the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize of mathematics, and was known as the Mozart of mathematics.


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Almost everyone who has seen or heard his story will agree that this lanky, clean-eyed boy is a true genius. His high IQ and amazing achievements are a gift from god.


But only Tao understood that cleverness was a small factor,
Wise family education, unremitting professional exploration and passion, and embracing the happiness of life really helped him to put together the jigsaw puzzle of success.


Slow down the growth of genius


What do you do when you discover your child is a prodigy? Many people’s first reaction is a little panic, Tao Zhexuan’s parents Tao Xiangguo and Liang Huilan is no exception.


Compared with many people of that era, the Tows were well-educated middle-class students at the University of Hong Kong, one a pediatrician, the other a teacher.
In the 1970s, they emigrated to Australia, where they had their first son, Tao Che-xuan.


Tao Zhexuan in his childhood
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The Tao Zhexuan when childhood is not only a thick eyebrows big eye meng baby, more early ground showed extraordinary talentAt the age of two, he began to teach older children to count; At the age of three, he sprayed arithmetic on glass with detergent.


After realizing that their son was different, the Tao family was in a panic, with tales of child prodigies popping up in their heads.
“Maybe we can also produce one of the smallest college students ever, or even a PhD.”“They thought as they bundled their three-and-a-half-year-old son into a primary school uniform and sent him off to school.


Before long, however, Tao zhexuan returned to kindergarten.


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That was because the Tao family found that their young son did not adapt well to the teaching and social environment of primary school. Tao, who is sensitive only to numbers, has trouble keeping up with other subjects.


Tao Zhexuan’s father, Tao Xiangguo, made a decision to slow down his son’s growth. It was no longer his goal to catalyze the development of gifted children until he had produced a “star” that satisfied the adults.


He wanted to develop his son’s potential in math, lay a solid foundation in humanities, and consciously guide and train him in social and emotional intelligence so that he could grow into a genius at his own pace.


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Thanks to such a wise father, Tao Zhexuan’s life may have had a qualitative change. Look back at the three well-known prodigies in mainland China
Ning Bo, Xie Yanbo and Gan Zheng, almost under the expectation of adults, towards the direction of “the smallest outstanding student” all the way, as a result, some become monks, some mental disorders… The early intelligence of the first mover advantage, they did not have the last laugh.


Compared with prodigies who are pushed forward, consciously or unconsciously, by adults, Tao is undoubtedly lucky.


He went to kindergarten, primary school, middle school… In each school, tao zhexuan’s parents will discuss with the principal to arrange comprehensive subjects and normal school life. However, as long as the child wants, tao Zhexuan can learn any advanced courses first at any time and jump grades according to his own ideas.


Renowned mathematician Erdesh reviews a paper written by 10-year-old Tao Zhexuan
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In a free and relaxed atmosphere, Tao Zhexuan grew strong and his talent for mathematics was fully developed.While not deliberately steered in any direction, the child prodigy’s achievements are nonetheless gratifying


At the age of 7, I learned calculus by myself and published a book about Basic program to calculate perfect numbers. When I was eight and a half years old, I took the MATH part of SAT and got 760 points (out of 800). When he was 10 years old, his thesis was praised by mathematician Erdes. Since then, she has frequently appeared in the media spotlight as a regular winner of international Mathematical Olympiad competitions.


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The couple took Tao to meet minaka Gross, a renowned local professor of gifted children, who marveled at tao’s high IQ. After careful research, Professor Gross suggested that Tao was capable of completing university before the age of 12, setting a new Australian record, but the tao family rejected the suggestion.


They left the decision to their son. Tao also believes that only by laying a solid foundation in science, philosophy and art can tao’s love for mathematics grow stronger and brighter as his mind matures.


In 1989, at the age of 14, Tao zhexuan finally made it to college, of course, as a result of his slow growth. He spent two years at Flinders University completing his Hons in Science, followed by a year at the Master’s.


Flinders University
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After graduating with a master’s degree, Tao zhexuan pursued a higher goal in the field of mathematics and got a letter of recommendation from Eldesh, a mathematician he knew as a child, to pursue a doctorate at Princeton University.


This was the real turning point in his life — his transformation from a gifted mathematical prodigy who had won many competitions to a true mathematical researcher and pioneer.


He was 17 when he started at Princeton.


From mathematical Olympiad prodigy to mathematician


In mathematics, there is an interesting phenomenon.


Generally speaking, “Mathematical Olympiad prodigy” and “mathematician” have little intersection, many famous mathematicians, when young is not the outstanding Olympic competition; Olympians, on the other hand, may disappear into higher mathematics.


Math olympiad and do scientific research, in fact, there is a difference in essence, a sprinter, such as the outbreak of a short period of time and impact;
The other is like a marathon, which is won only after a long period of patience and accumulation.


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But according to His mentor, Wolff Prize winner Professor Elias Stein, Tao is one of the very few people who can excel at both mathematical olympiad and scientific research.


“A once-in-a-lifetime prodigy,” the professor said of him.


Even so, Tao, a freshman at Princeton, had his darkest moments.
There were so many great minds in the Mathematics department at Princeton. The students were all talking about fields he had never heard of, and the breadth and depth of the mathematics major made him more aware of his own ignorance.


Princeton University
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Tao was depressed for a while, getting so caught up in the game that he almost failed the candidate exam that determined whether he could continue his doctoral studies. Tao’s high IQ helped him solve most of life’s problems in the first half of his life, but it was only after he came here that he realized that many things were beyond “I’m smart”.


Fortunately, Tao Zhexuan did not delay too long in the astray, accepted from childhood
“Holistic Education”It gave him the courage to recover from setbacks, and Princeton’s first-class teaching resources gave him the freedom to explore the road.


His research interests range from harmonic analysis to partial differential equations; From analytic number theory to arithmetic number theory; There is also an engineering: camera compression sensing principle. In the process of adjusting his mentality and changing himself, Tao Zhexuan also felt the beauty of mathematics more and more, and was fascinated by its vibrant creativity.


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At the beginning of the millennium, Tao and Ben Green, now a professor at Cambridge University, solved a conjecture related to “twin primes” by using series of primes: the difference between the sequences of some primes, such as 3, 7 and 11, is 4; The next number in the sequence, 15, is not prime.
They caused a stir in mathematics by proving that such arithmetic sequences could be found even in an infinite series of prime numbers.


After all, in the 2,300 years since Euclid came up with the idea of twin prime numbers, this was the first systematic proof, known as the Green-Tao theorem.


In 2015, Tao announced that he had proved the erdesh difference, which his mentor, mathematician Erdesh, proposed in 1932, after more than 80 years of shelving until Erdesh’s death.


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Tao Zhexuan was no longer a confused student. He became UCLA’s youngest professor and a rising star in mathematics.
He has received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, a Fields Medal, and an Alan Wartman Award from the National Science Foundation for his work in the field of mathematics.


The most recent record is the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, co-founded and funded by alibaba’s Jack Ma and His wife, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, among others, which gives $3 million to outstanding young mathematicians.


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But after receiving the huge prize money, Tao turned around and donated it to a foundation that nurtures a new generation of young talent. “Spend more” is the only reason Tao zhexuan gives.


In his life, scientific research is the eternal theme, Tao Zhexuan early beyond that just relying on high IQ to solve the problem of the prodigy stage, now he is a simple and pure mathematician, behind the success is more will power and never give up in the face of adversity.


“Hard work, courage, love and persistence are all more important than cleverness.” Mathematician Tao Zhexuan summed up the secret of success like this.


A happy ordinary man



Tao is also nicknamed “Mozart of mathematics” because of his brilliant performance in the field of mathematics. But as students and faculty at UCLA and those close to Mr. Tao know, the young professor is nothing like the musical prodigy Mozart.


Mozart, for all his musical talent, was an eccentric character who offended people everywhere. The “eccentric” seems to go hand in hand with the destiny of genius — Newton, bad-tempered; Nash, the paranoid; Perelman, who likes to have long nails…
But the most precious thing about Tao Zhexuan is that he is different from any one of them. He is a genius and a happy ordinary person.


A photo of Tao Zhexuan’s family of four
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While teaching at UCLA, he met his wife, Laura, a Korean-american three years his junior, who is now a NASA engineer and has a son and a daughter with Tao. In the group photo of a family of four, Tao Zhexuan always shows a bright smile, leaning on his wife and children, and an ordinary middle-aged man.


On the outside he was a respected professor, but at home he was a dad who changed diapers, played with the kids and took them to school.
One of the parents who sent their children to UCLA for a summer camp was surprised to find That Tao zhexuan was so active in their parents’ group. He even came to pick up their children after the summer camp.


Image taken from the Internet




In response to zhihu’s question “What was it like to work for tao Zhexuan as a PhD student at UCLA,” one of his former students replied,
Professor Tao is the kind of tutor who is tolerant of his students, but by no means indifferent to them.
If students are being “bullied” by other professors, he will stand up for them; His readiness to discuss problems with students was impressive; The most amazing thing is that no matter how difficult the problem is, even if Tao zhexuan can’t answer it, he always finds a way to find people to help him.


Photo taken from Zhihu



He is modest, quick to respond and has a wide network of contacts. For those students who can’t get inside UCLA and feel its charm up close, there is another way to learn from Tao: browse his WordPress website.


At ordinary times, Tao Zhexuan would share his thoughts and opinions on mathematics here, and also put forward some good ways to learn mathematics.

Students from all over the world come here to leave messages, he will read every message carefully and reply.


Image taken from WordPress




As a New York Times reporter put it when writing about Tao, the most enviable thing about Tao is not his prodigious talents and outstanding achievements, but his ability to possess them while growing into a happy “normal person” who enjoys a healthy life.


There are few geniuses in this world, and still fewer happy ones. Fortunately, a genius like Tao Zhexuan shows us what it is like to be a gifted child, fully extended.


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Whether it is inner talent and hard work, outside education and guidance, or a combination of the two, may depend on different people.


For most of us, becoming a genius is something we can only aspire to, but it is the ordinary majority of us who create the soil in which prodigies grow.

The emergence of genius is not rare, but how to grow into “Tao Zhexuan” type of genius, is always a problem worth thinking about.

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