There is an article about Terry Tao

in this morning's paper but it also appeared in my news feed last night. I went to bed thinking about him and about someone else I know. 

For those of you who don't know I must explain that TerryTao is a mathematician, a winner of the Fields Medal - the "mathematical Nobel".   He has lived in California for many years but he was born here. He went to school at his local primary school and lasted a couple of years before he went off to the local high school.  There were articles about him. At the age of seven he was doing year eleven maths in the high school - and coming top of the class.

I know people who went to school with him. He was earnest, serious and hardworking even then. He also had an engaging smile, an air of absent mindedness about him at times.  A friend of mine was in the same maths class and said he was "super smart but still just a kid in some ways".  Of course he would be. At seven he might know a great deal more than other seven year old children but he did not have the life experiences of the sixteen and seventeen year old students around him. I wonder how lonely he was at times.

I have a friend who is also highly intelligent. Like Dr Tao she does not consider her "IQ" anything more than a score on a test on a particular day. Nevertheless other people would consider it to be something out of the ordinary because it is so far above the "average".  A... did not go to school until she was thirteen. This was not by choice but by circumstance. 

By the time she went to school she had qualified for entry to any prestigious university but she spent two years at school. A... knew she was simply far too young and lacking in life experience to go. She did not want to study maths. Her passion is for language and languages. After two years of school, which she admits to having loathed, she spent a year in another country. There she immersed herself in another language and helped students there to learn English.  She went off to university still younger than most but at a time she felt ready for it.

At university she did outstandingly well and she has done outstandingly well ever since but has admitted to often feeling lonely. We met when I was doing some work with children who have severe and profound communication issues. She was sitting quietly with a group at university when these were being discussed and asked me if she could come and observe one day. I was surprised but she seemed absolutely genuine so I agreed. 

Her encounter that day seemed to give her another purpose in life. She has pursued a career in other fields but her limited spare time is often given to working with children who have such limited communication skills. I have watched her at work with them and the interaction between them is extraordinary. She has seen many of them grow into adults and moved on to helping others as they leave. 

Although we live on opposite sides of the world we have remained friends, good friends.  This is so even when her intellectual capacities sometimes make me feel stupid. She never intends for that to happen. It is just that she seems to understand so much so quickly.

Some time ago someone asked her if she regretted her career choice. They felt she should have considered maths as a career but she just smiled and said that it would not have been right.

"I didn't have that little bit extra you need, the passion for it. Yes, maths was interesting. It was a challenge but language felt so much more important for me."

I wonder what sort of mathematician she would have been if she had chosen that route. She would have been very, very good but she would not have had Terry's skills.  As A... has said, you need a passion for the subject. Being "interested" is not enough to do as well as either of them have done.  I admit to feeling passionate about providing people with the skills to communicate with each other. It is not quite the same as it is when combined with their level of ability. Both intelligence and passion are necessary for outstanding success.

I wonder though what would happen if we could inject all children with a "passion" drug?