Terence Tao
| Celebrity |
Australian-American mathematician |
| User | Typing | Confidence | Alternative | ||
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Analysis updated 5 weeks ago |
I've long thought he was Delta ST but thinking about it more, LSE is better. Very wide breadth of research, very high level of output in general, and has written a bunch of stuff on productivity to help others as well as a lot of material that is semi-accessible to explain concepts. His relatively inexpressive presentation is really the only issue and probably not even a big issue at that. He also often takes a community leader role in various knowledge-based projects like Polymath or the Equational Theories Project. His work style is more focused on getting results, even if the techniques to get there are occasionally less than elegant and ad hoc. Works on a variety of areas but seems most at home in hard analysis, an area known for hard and complicated technical proofs. I cannot see him as a Te vulnerable type whatsoever. Unsure if SLI might not work better though. I really cannot see him as a Ti valuing type, there is Te vocabulary all over the place. Often talks about mathematical "tools", and managing one's time and energy effectively. Some of his personal views: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/time-management/use-common-sense/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/work-hard/ The idea of getting together to work on beneficial community projects is certainly consistent with Delta extroversion. As you can see in the above link, he also is very skeptical of having any kind of grand ambitions, e.g. to solve some big open problem, or overly committing oneself to one option. So he is specifically rejecting Beta Ni and not Gamma Ni. Working a lot on one thing is often something based on passion, and the opposite approach is to be practical and realistic about what you can accomplish, and take small steps here and there, similar to what Tao advocates. Also, not only does Tao advocate this approach, he very clearly practices it himself - his own research program, if it exists at all, is quite broad and not limited to one area, a clear contrast with other intuitive introvert mathematicians like Grothendieck, Wiles, Godel, and probably Mochizuki, who all very consciously decided to work on problems or areas that they felt to be important. Tao seems instead to work on "whatever is there", more like Erdos for example. |
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