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The 3-body problem Newton couldn't solve | Terence Tao

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Mathematician Terence Tao walks through the 6 ideas he considers foundational to all of math, and explores the stories behind them that stretch far back into history.

Watch Terence Tao's Full Interview ►One of the world's greatest mathematicians...

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About Terence Tao:

Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, where he excelled at university-level math by age nine and became, at 13, the youngest-ever gold medalist at the International Mathematical Olympiad. He earned his PhD from Princeton at 20 and joined UCLA's mathematics faculty, becoming the university's youngest-ever tenured professor at 24. In 2006 he won the Fields Medal for contributions spanning partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis, and additive number theory, and he remains a UCLA professor today, known for prolific, wide-ranging work including the Green–Tao theorem on prime number progressions.

20 Comments

@nahidhkurdi6740 1 month ago

The title of the video is misleading. I thought Tao was to speak about the 3-body problem.

@lucasfernando4097 1 month ago

@30:32 "We suspect that our solar system, which currently has... what? 8 planets or something?"
LOL. This is a VERY Mathematician-type phrase!

@labibbidabibbadum 1 month ago

I tried it. Not only was having an infinite number of monkeys in the house really horrible, worse, in their version, Rosencrantz lived.

@6Cthebest 1 month ago

Beautifully ordered and elaborated on. As an evolutionary biologist, I'm mighty satisfied 😊

@achalpandey9833 1 month ago

I am a teacher I talk about him in my classes, even though it is not Mathematics. I really feel people like Terrance must be inspiration and idol of human race. Sadly, many of my students don't know him. But I hope that changes.

@noCOtwo 4 weeks ago

It's great that he is so bright and that he wants to enlighten us, that must take patience . A great person.

@ThingDenier 1 month ago

YESSSS ANOTHER TAO VID!!!

@sanny27 3 weeks ago (edited)

Such a great explanation. As someone who has always been afraid of mathematics and disliked it a lot, I almost enjoyed the explanations. It is a rare gift.

@jaroslavzalesak1447 1 month ago

I think, it would actually do a lot of good for me, if in maths classes these problems were introduced this broadly. It would make it much more palatable for me, I think. Because the regular drill did feel very out of touch, but this video was interesting. Thank you for the video! 😊

@allybowman345 1 month ago

Maths has pretty much always eluded me, apart from the everyday stuff. I saw a maths university paper once and it was just a complete mystery - wow. I realise it's extremely important though !

@_schnelli4800 10 days ago

Great talk, I really related to his comments on analysis and dynamical systems in my own research, where it’s actually easier to reason about infinities first.

@PunIssuer 3 weeks ago

Re: Infinite Monkey, you could compress any file to an offset and length of decimal digits in, for example, pi…

@erivaldolopes632 4 weeks ago

Title very misleading. Perhaps it should be "the 6 math essentials" in lieu of "3-body... Newton"

@ikarljoseph 1 month ago

Good one 👍.

@mikemcknight317 4 weeks ago

Terence looks like he is ready to "exit stage right".... Love listening to this guy.

@HisMajesty99 2 weeks ago

Refreshing contrast to Tucker Carlson recently asking, “Why are there letters in math?” 😒

@Satyr37 4 weeks ago

4:25 "take away three from four" I think he meant take away four from three. To get a negative number. From context. Listen between 4:00 and 4:40.

@geertnijs9550 1 day ago

some operations are not commutatif: for example: if i put on my socks and then my shoes, it is not the same as putting on first my shoes and then the socks. that one i need to remember :-)