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Akshay Venkatesh and Angel Yu might have felt they were looking into a mirror when they met at UWA recently.

It's not that they look alike, but the 30-year-old Professor Venkatesh, one of the world's most gifted mathematicians, was looking across the table at a 15-year-old mathematics whizz who had just won a bronze medal at the International Mathematics Olympiad in Amsterdam.

Professor Venkatesh was probably remembering his bronze medal won at the same event as a precocious teenager, while Angel may have been seeing himself in 15 years time: a clever young boy who made a career out of the thing he loved, mathematics.

When Professor Venkatesh was 15, he has halfway through a degree in pure mathematics at UWA.

He won a Hackett Scholarship for a PhD at Princeton University and is now Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, specialising in number theory.

Number theory is also Angel's favourite branch of maths, along with geometry. He skipped two years at school and is now in Year 12 at Perth Modern School, planning to study mathematics at tertiary level next year. Which university he attends will depend on what scholarships are offered to him.

Professor Venkatesh has returned to his alma mater as a professor-at-large during UWA's Year of Mathematics. He is doing some work with his former teacher and one of his biggest admirers, Winthrop Professor Cheryl Praeger. He has also delivered a free lecture, and a master class on experimental mathematics.

He teaches three or four courses a year at Stanford but concentrates mainly on research. "I think pure research is valuable for understanding the world," he said.

And did he have any advice for the boy who is following in his footsteps? "No, not really. I've only just met Angel and you can't advise people until you know them," he said.

While he was at school at Scotch College, Professor Venkatesh won medals at both the international olympiads for mathematics and physics. He is believed to be the only Australian to have done so. He said that although he excelled in those areas, he did not do as well in other areas.

But Angel does well in English and chemistry, as well as being at the top of his class in mathematics and physics. He also plays the clarinet. He said that, as a young boy, he enjoyed solving puzzles and mazes and developed a love of numbers when he was about six.

He has been tutored and mentored by Dr Greg Gamble, an honorary research associate in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, who was a teacher in the School in Professor Venkatesh's undergraduate days.

When young Akshay was off to Princeton around the age of 16, he told UWA's Campus News that the age gap between him and his friends did not bother him; that he did not mind not being able to drive, vote or go to the tavern. Angel says the same. He is excited, rather than daunted, at the prospect of going to university at the age of 15.

Both the budding mathematician and the university professor tutored their school friends, not for payment, but for the love of it.

And the love of mathematics is what UWA's Year of Mathematics is hoping to nurture.

Published in UWA News , 5 September 2011