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Akshay Venkatesh, a renowned Indian-Australian mathematician, is one of the four winners of mathematics' prestigious Fields Medal, known as the Nobel Prize for math.
The Fields medals are awarded every four years to the most promising mathematicians under the age of 40.
New Delhi-born Venkatesh, 36, who is currently teaching at Stanford University, has won the Fields Medal for his “profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics.”
The other three winners are:
Each winner receives a 15,000 Canadian-dollar cash prize. At least two, and preferably four people, are always honoured in the award ceremony.
The prize was inaugurated in 1932 at the request of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields, who ran the 1924 Mathematics Congress in Toronto.
From being a child prodigy to becoming one of the most renowned researchers in the field of mathematics, Venkatesh's journey has been full of achievements and accolades.
He moved to Perth, Australia, with his parents when he was two years old.
He finished high school when he was 13 and went to the University of Western Australia, graduating with first class honours in mathematics in 1997, at the age of 16.
In 2002, he earned his PhD at the age of 20. Since then, he has gone from holding a post-doctoral position at MIT to becoming a Clay Research Fellow and, now a professor at Stanford University.
His research has been recognised with many awards, including the Ostrowski Prize, the Infosys Prize, the Salem Prize and Sastra Ramanujan Prize.
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