A UCLA mathematician sometimes called the "Mozart of Math," a Stanford University aviation engineer using abstract mathematical principles to help prevent airborne collisions, a San Francisco entrepreneur developing affordable drugs for neglected diseases in Third World countries and a Palo Alto engineer helping the blind read are among the 25 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants.
Each winner will receive $500,000 over five years to use as they see fit.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday September 22, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 43 words Type of Material: Correction
MacArthur grants: An article in Tuesday's California section on the 2006 MacArthur Foundation grants misspelled three recipients' names. It had sculptor Josiah McElheny's first name as Josia; Dr. D. Holmes Morton's last name as Martin and writer George Saunders' last name as Sanders.
Terence Tao, 31, achieved a remarkable double with the MacArthur award. Last month, he also received the Fields Medal, the top international prize awarded to mathematicians. The medal is often called the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
The Fields citation said Tao was "a supreme problem-solver whose spectacular work has had an impact across several mathematical areas."
A child prodigy, Tao began taking courses at Flinders University in his native Australia at age 9, graduating with a bachelor's degree with honors at 16.
Along the way, he participated in the International Mathematical Olympiads at ages 10, 11 and 12, winning bronze, silver and gold medals, respectively.
He received a master's degree from Flinders at 17 and a doctorate from Princeton University at 21. Upon graduation, he joined the faculty at UCLA, becoming a full professor at 24.
"Terry is like Mozart; mathematics just flows out of him," said UCLA mathematician John Garnett. "He's probably the best mathematician in the world now."
Tao said he was "very surprised" by the award. "I knew about the MacArthurs, but I didn't connect them to mathematics."
He doesn't yet know what he will do with the money, but "it should be very useful," he said. He will probably use it to travel to conferences, buy books and so forth, he said. "Mathematicians are fairly cheap" to support, he added.
Victoria Hale, 45, is founder and chief executive of the Institute for OneWorld Health in San Francisco.
The nonprofit group acquires donated rights to promising compounds that have either been deemed unprofitable by the pharmaceutical industry or left undeveloped by research labs unable to obtain funding.
Last week, the foundation announced that it had received approval from the Indian government to begin distributing an antibiotic called paromomycin to combat leishmaniasis, the second-most deadly parasitic disease in the world after malaria.
