A former Perth school boy has been awarded the prestigious Fields Medal, known as the ‘Nobel Prize for mathematics’, becoming just the second Australian to receive the award. Professor Akshay Venkatesh now teaches at Stanford University in the US but he studied at the University of Western Australia, graduating at just 16 with honours in pure mathematics. The 36-year-old has been recognised with the Fields Medal, which is awarded once every four years to between two and four people under the age of 40 ‘to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work’.

Peter Scholze, a 30-year-old professor at the University of Bonn, was the youngest winner. The others were 40-year-old Caucher Birkar of the University of Cambridge in England and 34-year-old Alessio Figalli of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Professor Venkatesh is now the second Australian to receive the Medal, following in the footsteps of Dr Terence Tao who won in 2006. Professor of mathematics at the University of WA – and Venkatesh’s former classmate – Michael Giudici told the ABC explaining the work to the general public is hard.