The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The colloquial name is in honour of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. Fields was instrumental in establishing the award, designing the medal itself, and funding the monetary component. The Fields Medal is often viewed as the greatest honour a mathematician can receive. It comes with a monetary award, which since 2006 is C$15,000. The medal was first awarded in 1936 to Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and American mathematician Jesse Douglas, and it has been awarded every four years since 1950. Its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions.

The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics" for being traditionally regarded as the most prestigious award in the field of mathematics, however in contrast to the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal is awarded only every four years. The Medal also has an age limit: a recipient's 40th birthday must not occur before January 1 of the year in which the Fields Medal is awarded. As a result some great mathematicians have missed it by having done their best work (or having had their work recognized) too late in life. The 40-year rule is based on Fields' desire that

Terence "Terry" Chi-Shen Tao FRS (simplified Chinese: 陶哲轩; traditional Chinese: 陶哲軒) (born 17 July 1975, Adelaide), is an Australian born American mathematician working in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, combinatorics, and analytic number theory. He currently holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was one of the recipients of the 2006 Fields Medal.

Tao was a child prodigy, one of the subjects in the longitudinal research on exceptionally gifted children by education researcher Miraca Gross. His father told the press that at the age of two, during a family gathering, Tao attempted to teach a 5-year-old child Arithmetic and English. According to Smithsonian Online Magazine, Tao could carry out basic arithmetic by the age of two. When asked by his father how he knew numbers and letters, he said he learned them from Sesame Street. Aside from English, Tao speaks Cantonese, but does not write Chinese.