Child Prodigies Of The Modern Age_44584

With easier access to education and the development of the internet, we have the information but do we have the knowledge? Most would say not. However, child prodigies have existed throughout history, with the most famous contributing to the arts such as Mozart and Picasso, but today it seems that those bestowed with the honorary label of child genius are more known for their academic, scientific, and mathematical development. What follows is a quick exploration into the lives of a few of today s prodigies.

One of the most famous recent prodigies is Michael Kearney, born in 1984 in Hawaii. His first notable traits of his advanced intelligence came when he learned to speak at just four culminating when he famously proclaimed to his paediatrician, I have an ear infection in my left ear, two months later. Although being diagnosed with Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder he finished high school by the age of six, and received a graduate degree at 10 in anthropology. More recently, he appeared on TV show, Who wants to be a millionaire? And won $25,000.

Kearney s record of being the youngest postgraduate achiever was broken in 1999 by the Indian-born Tathagat Avatar Tulsi. Tulsi completed high school by age nine and by the age of 17 had written the influential paper entitled, A New Algorithm for Fixed Point Quantum Search. He is now a senior research scientist at the Institute of Science in Bangalore, and claims to be originally inspired by Stephen Hawking s, A Brief History of Time, which he received as a present from his father when he was six.

This month, David Levy from Houston in Texas will be graduating from San Jacinto College with an associate degree in mathematics. At the age of 14, he is not the youngest child graduate, but he is already studying Mechanics at the University of Houston. What really astounds those around him is the speed at which he learns things, in fact his father only began to teach his son how to read at three and a half, but by the age of four David was reading Hamlet.

Perhaps the strangest story of one of our modern child prodigies is that of Sufiah Yusof. Yusof was 12 when she was accepted at Oxford University to study mathematics. Daughter of a pioneering scientist, after completing an exam in 2001, Yusof ran away from her flat citing pressure from her parents as the reason She was later found working in an internet caf?in Bournemouth, and later returned to Oxford but didn t finish the course and married a trainee lawyer. They divorced after just 13 months, and the next time Yusof hit the headlines was when a News Of The World reporter discovered her advertising as a prostitute.