AT THE age of two, Terence Tao could already add up and subtract using the magnetic numbers his parents stuck on the fridge.

At eight, he scored better than 99 per cent of 17-year-old prospective university students on an international aptitude test for mathematics.

The Adelaide-born prodigy was appointed a professor at 24, and now, at 31, has become the first Australian to win a Fields Medal, the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel prize.

The award was presented in Madrid yesterday by Spain's King Juan Carlos I at a congress attended by 4000 international mathematicians.

Professor Tao, of the University of California in Los Angeles, was honoured for being a "supreme problem-solver" who has made breakthroughs in areas including wave motion and prime numbers - which have applications in fibre optics and information security.