Terence Tao

Again, you see these people try to only solve the really big math problems and not work on things that are less sexy, if you wish, but actually still interesting and instructive.

As you say, the way the human mind works, we understand things better when they're attached to humans, and also if they're attached to a small number of humans.

The way our human mind is wired, we can comprehend

the relationship between 10 or 20 people.

But once you get beyond 100 people, there's a limit.

I think there's a name for it.

Beyond which, it just becomes the other.

So you have to simplify the whole mass.

99.9% of humanity becomes the other.

And often these models are incorrect, and this causes all kinds of problems.

But

So, yeah, so to humanize a subject, you know, if you identify a small number of people and say, you know, these are representative people of a subject, role models, for example, that has some role, but it can also be, yeah, too much of it can be harmful because it's,

I'll be the first to say that my own career path is not that of a typical mathematician.

I had a very accelerated education.

I skipped a lot of classes.

I think I always had very fortunate mentoring opportunities, and I think I was at the right place at the right time.

Just because someone doesn't have my knowledge

trajectory, it doesn't mean that they can't be good mathematicians.

They can be good mathematicians in a very different style, and we need people of a different style.

Sometimes too much focus is given on the person who took the last step to complete