Mathematician Terence Tao receives Madison Medal at Princeton University's Alumni Day

It is my honor to introduce this year's recipient of the James Madison Medal, Terence Tao of the graduate class of 1996. Born and raised in Australia, Terry, as he goes by, was just 17 years old when he arrived at Princeton to start his PhD. Exactly. However, it wasn't his first time in Princeton. His father, Billy Tao, brought Terry to the Institute of Advanced Study when he was just nine to meet with the famed mathematicians Enrico Bombieri and Charles Fefferman to judge young Terry's potential. His father wanted to know, "Does this kid have real talent? " After posing a few complex problems to test Terry's creativity, Charlie quickly realized, as he said, that, "If I had said no, that would have been on a very short list of the dumbest mistakes in my life." Terry has been called "the Mozart of math" for his inventiveness as a mathematician and has conducted research in both pure and applied mathematics, contributing to compressive sensing and number theory. He is one of the most singular thinkers in mathematics today. His technical brilliance, exceptional creativity, and wide-ranging curiosity and collaborative spirit have led to multiple path -breaking discoveries. His work has also improved lives in tangible ways, such as developing algorithms that speed up MRI scans. When he was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006, the International Mathematical Union cited his otherworldly ingenuity for hitting upon new ideas and a startling natural point of view that leaves other mathematicians wondering, "why didn't anyone else see that before." A year later, in 2007, he won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. There's clearly a theme here, people. Now, as the James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences at UCLA and the Director of Special Projects at its Institute for Pure and Applied mathematics, Terry continues to focus on solving new problems while educating a new generation of students. In 2014, after he won the Breakthrough Prize in mathematics, he gave away the three million cash prize to endow fellowships for graduate students from developing countries and for gifted American high school students. He has also shown academic leadership beyond on the chalkboard. In 2025, he spoke out against federal cuts to university research and education funding. As he wrote, "it is a deliberate dismantling of the institutions,