[somerando7]

If I were to guess, his brothers and parents pushed him, and had more experience with teaching compared to their older son. They got him interested, and he went from there.

He was probably lucky to be the younger brother growing up.

[pedrosorio]

Terence Tao is the oldest brother.

But of course that doesn’t matter. One could equally hypothesize being the oldest allows for most attention from the parents, etc.

But then again, Judit Polgar, by far the strongest chess player among the famous 3 Polgar sisters, was the youngest…

In my opinion, this sort of “human peak” genius performance requires more than small differences in upbringing.

[somerando7]

Oh, then I was completely wrong :D I would think the youngest kids are generally the more academically advanced. (But this is coming from someone who has 0 kids :D)