Why Did Vlad Tenev Race Through Math?

Vlad Tenev raced through math because his family said a scholarship was how he could go to college, and their right to stay in the country was not secure. Growing up around the University of Maryland, teachers met his parents and said he was really good at math, and the community pushed kids with potential to skip grades and do more math. His parents sat him down and said the family's finances were very insecure, they were not making any money, and he would have to do very well in school to get a scholarship. They were visa holders, and if they lost their jobs they would be sent back to Bulgaria.

He turned the pressure into a competition with himself and with his parents, who were also strong in school. He asked his dad what the hardest subject had been. The answer was chemistry, so he set out to do really well at chemistry. Math felt like a video game with a ladder of achievement: you always know the next hardest step, and he wanted to reach algebraic geometry or algebraic topology as early as he could. In his math PhD program, creating a new mathematical theory appealed to him because students still learn Gauss and Riemann, and a new theory might be something kids study hundreds of years later.