Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

The idea that Tao has accomplished more than, say, Serre because the latter, who won the Fields medal at 27, only received his PhD at 25 and his bachelor's at 22 while the former received his PhD at 21 and his bachelor's at 16 is so absurd that it can be refuted merely by alluding to it.

Your other points are similar.




Serre is indeed a top mathematician. (I'm actually surprised to find out that he's still alive!)

At this point Tao only has 3/4 his number of publications, similar numbers of textbooks, a similar number of awards (using https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Serre/ to count awards), and so on. I'd count Tao as having more of what I see as major breakthroughs, but that is subjective. But then again, Tao is half of Serre's age.

Yeah. I still think it is fair to put Tao in the same tier as Euler, Gauss and Hilbert.


Time will tell.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: