http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/20/stories/2006102004020300.htm

Thanjavur: The 2006 Shanmugha Arts Science Technology and Research Academy (SASTRA) — Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to

Prof Terence Tao of the University of California at

Los Angeles (UCLA).

The annual prize was launched in 2005. It is given for those making outstanding contributions in areas of mathematics influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan.

The age limit for the prize has been set at 32 because Ramanujan achieved so much in his brief life of 32 years. The $10,000 prize will be awarded at the International Conference on Number Theory and Combinatorics, December 19-22, at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan's hometown, a press release said on Thursday.

Prof. Tao has made path-breaking contributions in number theory, harmonic analysis, representation theory, and partial differental equations. His work has had major impact in combinatorics and ergodic theory as well. In the course of making significant progress on fundamental long-standing problems in these different areas, Prof. Tao has collaborated with a wide range of mathematicians.

Prof. Tao's work has also provided a fresh look at on the properties of wave maps which occur naturally in Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Prof.Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975 and lived there until 1992. He did his B.Sc (Hon) and M.Sc at Flinders University of South Australia. He then went to Princeton University in 1992 for his Ph.d, which he completed in 1996.

\"By awarding the first SASTRA Ramanujan Prizes to Manjul Bhargava of Princeton University and Kannan Soundararajan of University of Michigan in 2005, an exceptionally high standard was set. This is now continued with the award of the 2006 SASTRA Prize to Terence Tao,\" said Prof Krishnaswami Alladi, Chair of the Prize Committee.

The 2006 SASTRA-Ramanujan Prize Committee consisted of Chair - Krishnaswami Alladi (University of Florida), George Andrews (The Pennsylvania State University), Manjul Bhargava (Princeton University), James Lepowsky (Rutgers University), Tom Koornwinder (University of Amsterdam), Kannan Soundararajan (University of Michigan and Stanford sUniversity), and Michel Waldschmidt (University of Paris).

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Speech by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times....

"When we were young kids growing up in America, we were told to eat our
vegetables at dinner and not leave them. Mothers said, 'think of the
starving children in India and finish the dinner.' And now I tell my
children: 'Finish your maths homework. Think of the children in India
who would make you starve, if you don't.'"