Nine-year-old child to graduate university

Re:Nine-year-old child to graduate university by chabons on Friday November 15, 2019 @12:28PM (#21546745)

You probably only ever hear of the success stories. I can think of Terry Tao, John von Neumann, and Erik Demaine off the top of my head, not because they were prodigies, but because they have gained enough name recognition that I Google'd them and learned of their early education.

Even if the rest had very interesting research, you wouldn't hear about them outside of their chosen field unless they reached superstar status.

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Re:Nine-year-old child to graduate university by pmoriarty on Friday November 15, 2019 @01:00PM (#21547063)

Norbert Wiener[1], founder of cybernetics, was another famous prodigy:

"After graduating from Ayer High School in 1906 at 11 years of age, Wiener entered Tufts College. He was awarded a BA in mathematics in 1909 at the age of 14, whereupon he began graduate studies of zoology at Harvard. In 1910 he transferred to Cornell to study philosophy. He graduated in 1911 at 17 years of age."

There are also, of course, many, many more musical and chess prodigies, for example... Mozart probably being the most famous of them all.

Curiously, there don't seem to be any significant prodigy novelists or poets.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

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