Aussie Akshay Venkatesh takes Fields Medal, the Nobel of maths

For only the second time an Australian has won the world’s most prestigious maths award, the Fields Medal.

For only the second time, an Australian has won the world’s most prestigious maths award, the Fields Medal, considered to be equivalent to a Nobel prize.

Akshay Venkatesh, a former child maths prodigy who completed his schooling at Perth’s Scotch College at the age of 12, and finished his maths and physics degree at the University of Western Australia at 16, was announced a Fields Medal winner overnight at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Brazil.

Professor Venkatesh, who recently left Stanford to join Princeton University in the US, was awarded the medal mainly for his work in number ­theory, where he has successfully drawn on other fields of mathematics to come up with new ­results. The only other Australian to win the award, bestowed every four years, is Flinders University graduate Terry Tao, who won in 2006.

Retired UWA maths professor Cheryl Praeger, who mentored Professor Venkatesh when he went to the university aged 12, said his talent was extraordinary.

“At our first meeting I was speaking with Akshay’s mother Svetha, while Akshay was sitting at a table in my office reading my blackboard which contained fragments from a supervision of one of my PhD students,” said Professor Praeger, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Akshay Venkatesh was the youngest student to study at UWA.

“At Akshay’s request, I ­explained what the problem was. He coped with quite a lot of detail and I found that he could easily grasp the essence of the research.

“Akshay became the youngest ever student to study at UWA and went straight into second-year maths units.”

His mother Svetha Venkatesh, a computing science professor who is director of the Centre for Pattern Recognition and Data Analytics at Deakin University, said her son had not worked hard at university, even though he managed to complete a four-year honours degree in three years.

“He just kind of cruised through,” she said, remembering that he was fond of playing cricket with other students in the corridors. “Of course I’m proud of his maths, but I’m really proud of the person he is. He’s really turned out to be a wonderful person.”

Michael Giudici, a fellow maths student at UWA, said Professor Venkatesh had no problems ­adjusting to university even though he was five years younger than his cohort.

“He was very ­mature and well-­adjusted,” said Professor Giudici, who now holds a chair of mathematics at UWA. “He probably topped all his classes even though he was younger than us.”

Professor Venkatesh was born in New Delhi and moved to Perth as a child. His father, Venky Venkatesh, is a retired oil and gas ­engineer.

Professor Venkatesh is married and has two daughters, aged four and eight.