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re:[QUOTE][B]下面引用由[U]燕原...
下面引用由[U]燕原[/U]发表的内容:
补充一个:
陶哲渊(Trevor Tao)(1977年~),“菲尔茨奖”获得者陶哲轩的弟弟,出生在澳大利亚阿得雷德,是家中的次子。陶哲渊曾是澳大利亚国际象棋冠军,数学博士,曾获得国际数学奥林匹克铜牌,可以在仅听过一遍之后,在钢琴上弹出一只管弦乐队表演的乐曲。两岁时的陶哲渊曾被论断患有孤僻症。澳洲阿德雷德大学科学数学及音乐双学位。他表示,只知自己拥有这些才能,但实际的原因为何则并无头绪。现在为澳洲的国防科技组织工作。
他的父亲陶象国(BillyTao)和母亲梁蕙兰(GraceTao)均毕业于香港大学。陶象国后来成了一名儿科医生。梁蕙兰是物理和数学专业的高才生,曾做过中学数学教师。1972年,夫妇俩从香港移民到了澳大利亚。
想知道有没有记者报道这一家子平时的生活。
燕原,不知道这是不是你想要看的内容。《澳大利亚人报》副刊曾经有过两个报导,下面的是其中的一个。Terry在UCLA工作,娶了个韩国女子,有一个孩子。他的弟弟应该是极高功能的自闭,当然也可能是训练的功劳。报道中提到的书,见过准备借回来读一下。我们曾经见过他父亲,是一个普通的儿科大夫。
If you were looking for a place to study the Big Questions about human intelligence -- Is genius innate? Why are brilliant minds so often troubled? -- the Tao household in Adelaide's southern suburbs might seem an unlikely choice.
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For Billy and Grace Tao, life changed irrevocably one afternoon in 1977 when they were visiting friends and looked over to see their two-year-old son sitting on the floor teaching a group of five-year-olds how to spell and add. Asked how he had learnt these skills, Terry replied that he had been watching Sesame Street. By the time he enrolled in primary school three years later, he could sit for hours reading high school calculus textbooks. That same year, 1980, the Taos were told that Trevor, then aged two, was autistic.
“At the time it was a bit like someone throwing a ball to you and saying ‘Catch!’, then throwing another ball right after it,” recalls Billy, with characteristic sangfroid. “It’s not like you have time to wonder whether the balls will be too heavy; you just catch them. You don’t think, ‘I’ve got one child who is gifted and one who is autistic’, you just sit down and work out what to do.”
Autism scrambles the brain signals that govern human communication, and Trevor showed many classic symptoms. He avoided eye contact, didn’t speak, exhibited repetitive behaviours such as endlessly twirling a ball, and would become enraged if his routines were broken. The prognosis for him appeared to be a life of social isolation. But with the help of the Autistic Children’s Association of South Australia (now Autism SA), the Taos hired an instructor, Jean Bryant, who began teaching him behaviour modification techniques.
“When we originally looked at him we thought the outlook was pretty bleak,” recalls Billy. “In those days, if an autistic person could be taught some basic living skills – to make your bed, do the dishes, make a cup of tea – this would be considered good. To finish high school was a bit of a dream. To finish university was a fantasy.”
Jean Bryant later wrote a book about her experience of teaching Trevor Tao, and it’s difficult to connect the five-year-old she describes – who needed cue cards to learn how to dress and speak – with the 30-year-old who sits at the piano playing Rachmaninoff. Tall, gangly and bespectacled, with a high-domed forehead and thatch of spiked black hair, Trevor still speaks with the slightly flattened tonality of many autistic people, and exhibits quirky habits such as clasping his hands behind his back. He is, however, a droll and witty presence. Looking at a scrapbook which features him smiling goofily from the pages of Woman’s Day at the age of 10, he says: “Hmmm. I must have been in my autism mode.”
These days Trevor works as a research scientist at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Adelaide, specialising in image analysis. Two years ago, he completed a PhD thesis entitled An Extended Mumford-Shah Model and an Improved Region Merging Algorithm for Image Segmentation (don’t ask). He also writes anti-smoking songs set to tunes such as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (“Smoking causes heart disease and osteoporosis …”) The day I visited he played me this tune on the guitar and jokingly cited it as evidence that he is himself a genius. “That’s not genius,” advised his dad. “That’s obsession.”
Music was the key that first unlocked Trevor’s potential. As anyone who has seen the Dustin Hoffman film Rain Man will know, autistic savants have an almost paranormal ability to divine the intricate patterns within maths and musical notation. Allan Snyder likens it to a brain that receives information in ultra-high contrast: in social situations this causes overload and confusion, as the mind fixates on myriad irrelevant details, whereas the static data in a musical score or mathematical equation can be absorbed at a glance. Before he could even speak properly, Trevor could memorise music almost instantly and play it back note-perfect.
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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22216398-5012694,00.html |
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