Terence Tao


Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI | Lex Fridman Podcast
Jun 14, 2025

Terence Tao is widely considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history. He won the Fields Medal and the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, and has contributed to a wide range of fields from fluid dynamics with Navier-Stokes equations to mathematical physics & quantum mechanics, prime numbers & analytics number theory, harmonic analysis, compressed sensing, random matrix theory, combinatorics, and progress on many of the hardest problems in the history of mathematics.

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction
0:49 - First hard problem
6:16 - Navier–Stokes singularity
26:26 - Game of life
33:01 - Infinity
38:07 - Math vs Physics
44:26 - Nature of reality
1:07:09 - Theory of everything
1:13:10 - General relativity
1:16:37 - Solving difficult problems
1:20:01 - AI-assisted theorem proving
1:32:51 - Lean programming language
1:42:51 - DeepMind's AlphaProof
1:47:45 - Human mathematicians vs AI
1:57:37 - AI winning the Fields Medal
2:04:47 - Grigori Perelman
2:17:30 - Twin Prime Conjecture
2:34:04 - Collatz conjecture
2:40:50 - P = NP
2:43:43 - Fields Medal
2:51:18 - Andrew Wiles and Fermat's Last Theorem
2:55:16 - Productivity
2:57:55 - Advice for young people
3:06:17 - The greatest mathematician of all time
 
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