[swatcoder]

This may be hard to believe, but a lot of us here in "the HN crowd" have zero interest in celebrity and do not keep a catalog of them all in our heads. Even intellectual ones. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's also just its own interest one or may not have.

People approach things in a lot of different ways and it would be nice if we can just respect that instead of digging on each other or making unfounded assumptions.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I don't have much interest in celebrity either, but I feel that you're short-changing Terence Tao. He's not really famous due to being celebrated, but he's celebrated due to his level of skill and breadth of mathematical knowledge (sometimes known as the Mozart of Mathematics).

I think your sentiment is misplaced as I would expect HN commenters to have heard of Tao as he often features in posts about mathematics. I'm sure I recall seeing some comments from him too.

There's an approachable Numberphile video featuring him here: https://www.numberphile.com/videos/the-worlds-best-mathemati...