Professor Venkatesh, who graduated from the University of Western Australia aged 16 with honours in pure mathematics, has achieved his subject’s highest honour.
He has been awarded the Fields Medal, known as the “Nobel Prize for mathematics” — awarded once every four years to between two and four people under the age of 40.
It is an amazing achievement for the 36-year-old, who was described as a “prodigy” and a “genius” during his teenage years in Perth.
But for his mum, who is immensely proud of him, she just wants him to be happy.
“That is all I hope for him, that he is happy and he loves what he does,” said Svetha Venkatesh, who is herself a professor of computer science at Deakin University, and a leader in the field of machine learning.
Professor Venkatesh, who teaches at Stanford University in the US, is being honoured for work that combines insights from several different fields of mathematics.
His former classmate, and now professor of mathematics at the University of WA, Michael Giudici said explaining his work to the general public was hard.
“If it was easy for me to explain, then he wouldn’t have received the Fields Medal,” Professor Giudici said.
One of Professor Venkatesh’s most famous pieces of work is solving what’s called the “subconvexity problem”.
To do that, he developed new techniques and borrowed from other areas of mathematics, Professor Giudici said.
‘It was clear that Akshay was amazingly talented’
He recalled that despite Professor Venkatesh being so much younger than the rest of the group at university, he was incredibly well adjusted.
“I know in our fourth year, he was probably one of the main characters in the group — always discussing things other than mathematics,” he said.
By science, environment and technology reporter Michael Slezak (ABC) Photo: AAP
