Top Ten Modern Child Prodigies
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Psychologists define a “prodigy” as somebody who is on the extreme end of giftedness; someone who is very advanced in one area, usually not all areas, and years ahead of his/her peers. Typically, child prodigies emerge in mathematics, language, art, or music; some might include chess or even sports.
Signs of prodigy-hood can be seen as young as two or three years of age; for example, Mozart was writing and playing symphonies when he was only five years old. On the other hand, Picasso enjoyed a fruitful childhood period of painting brilliant pictures; his interest in art was apparent as soon as he could talk. His father was an art professor who discovered young Pablo painting when he was thirteen.
In some cases, prodigies are both born and made; they can be born with retentive memories and a quality of mind that enables them to relate and organize experiences, and they can be made in the sense that they receive opportunities and rewards of special practice, instruction, or training.
Historically, there have been many attempts to classify people into intelligence categories, according to their performance on a standardized intelligence test relative to the average performance of others of the same age. This is called Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Lewis Terman, who developed the original notion of IQ in 1916, proposed this scale for classifying IQ scores points to be: normal or average intelligence (90–109 points), superior intelligence (110–119), very superior intelligence (120–140), genius or near genius (over 140).
Here, we introduce you to our choice of Top Ten modern science child prodigies from around the world today in no specific order.
- Mahmoud Wael
An Egyptian prodigy, Mahmoud was born in January 1999. He memorized the multiplication table when he was three years old and his IQ reached 155 points when he was just six years old. At the age of eleven, Mahmoud won the title “World’s Smartest Kid” in the Guinness World Records, having the highest absolute indicator of IQ among his peers and being mentally capable of performing complex arithmetic operations with multi-digits with the same speed as a computer.
Mahmoud was the youngest person in the world to take courses of computer network programing. He met Egyptian scientist and Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail, and is hoping to become the youngest scientist to win the Nobel Prize.
- Akrit Jaswal
Jaswal was born on 23 April 1993. He began walking at an early age, talked before the age of one, and was said to have been reading Shakespeare when he was five. While most seven-year-olds were playing around pretending they were doctors, Akrit Jaswal was performing actual surgery. His love for science and anatomy was noticed by doctors who let him observe surgeries; he was inspired and soon learned all he could about surgery. At age twelve, he joined the Faculty of Medicine, and by the age of seventeen, he was working on his Master’s degree in Applied Chemistry.
- Tanishq Abraham
Tanishq Abraham is among the youngest members of Mensa genius society[1], which he joined when he was four years old. He started to show his genius at four months, when he began browsing children’s books and correctly answering questions about them. At five years old, Abraham finished the mathematics courses offered by Stanford University’s Education Program for Gifted Youth on five levels in just six months. His prodigious talent became even more evident at the age of six, as he was already taking high school and college courses. At the age of eleven, he was the youngest person to graduate from his University in California. He also publishes essays on NASA’s Lunar Science website.
- Kim Ung-Young
Korean Kim Ung-Young’s IQ is 210; born in 1962, Kim just may be the smartest man alive today. At three years old, Kim was a guest student of physics at the Hanyang University. At four, he was already able to read in several languages. At five years old, he was already able to solve complex calculus problems; before he was ten, he was already speaking eight languages. When Kim was seven, he was invited by NASA and was able to obtain his PhD in Physics at the Colorado State University before he turned fifteen.
- Priyanshi Somani
Somani is a mental calculator[2] from India. She started mental calculation at the age of six; by age eleven, she was the youngest participant at the Mental Calculation World Cup of 2010, which she won. She bested 36 other competitors from 16 countries, winning first place by solving the square root of ten six-digit numbers in a record-breaking 6 minutes 51 seconds. To top it off, she was the only participant to have 100% accuracy in addition, multiplication, and square roots in the history of the competition.
- Jacob Barnett
When he was two years old, Barnett was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. Doctors said that he might not be able to talk, read, or become independent in basic daily activities. Jacob proved the doctors wrong when he was able to recite the alphabet forwards and backwards at three years old.
At the same age, while visiting a planetarium, Jacob answered the presenter’s question of why the moons of Mars are oddly shaped. He enrolled at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, at age ten. While working on his degrees, he asserted that he might one day disprove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. He is currently working on his PhD in Quantum Physics.
- Elise Tan Roberts
Einstein’s IQ was 160; Elise Roberts’ IQ was 156 when she was just two years old! Professor Joan Freeman, a specialist education psychologist, put Roberts through a complex 45-minute IQ test just to silence skeptics before concluding that she was indeed gifted. She, thus, became the youngest member of Mensa, beating the record previously held by a three-year-old boy Oscar Wrigley. When Roberts was just five months old, she started speaking; when she was eight months old, she started walking, and was running by the time she was ten months.
- March Tian Boedihardjo
March Tian Boedihardjo was born in Hong Kong and is the youngest person to enroll at Hong Kong University at nine years old. He finished his A-levels, maintaining A’s in advanced mathematics courses and a B in Statistics. He participated in a specially-designed, double-degree program, Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Science and Master of Philosophy in Mathematics, which he completed in 2011; one year earlier than the designed curriculum. He is currently studying for a PhD in Mathematics in the USA.
- Ainan Cawley
Sometimes, the right ingredients just come together to create a chemistry genius. Ainan Cawley of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, now fifteen years old, was just six years old when he gave a science lecture about acid and alkaloids at a Singapore school. He was only seven years old when he passed the chemistry O-level exam, a test meant for teens aged sixteen and up. The following year, he enrolled in the Singapore Polytechnic, becoming the world’s youngest student ever to take up a third-year tertiary module.
- Gregory Smith
Born in 1990, Gregory R. Smith was memorizing and reciting books at fourteen months; he enrolled in university at ten years of age. When he graduated, Gregory was the youngest person ever to receive a Master’s degree from the University of Virginia. This young man travels the globe as a peace and children’s rights activist, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of twelve. He is the founder of International Youth Advocates, an organization that promotes principles of peace and understanding among young people throughout the world.
Being a child prodigy means having an enormous talent; one that is simply there, and does not take decades to master. A child prodigy evokes awe, amazement, and wonder; they might make you feel inadequate, but keep in mind that they can also give you hope with the amazing, wonderful things they can do.
References
listverse.com
www.britannica.com
www.cracked.com
thecairopost.youm7.com
www.therichest.com
bashny.net
www.therichest.coml
www.oddee.com
[1] Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world, for additional information please visit: https://mensa.org/