Among those with preternatural abilities are Terence Tao, Christopher Hirata, and Kim Ung-Yong, whom I highlight in this post.
Terence Tao
Tao gave the phrase "child prodigy" a whole new meaning. Now 41, the Australian-American mathematician was teaching 5-year-olds how to spell and add when he was only 2!
When he was 10, he began participating in International Mathematical Olympiads. He won a bronze in 1986, silver in 1987, and gold in 1988, becoming the youngest Olympiad ever to win a gold medal. At 16, he'd already earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees; he'd go on to earn his Ph.D. four years later. He currently teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Christopher Hirata
Hirata, a 35-year-old cosmologist and astrophysicist, has an IQ of 225! When he was 13, he received a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad. A year later, he began his undergrad studies at Caltech University. At 16, he was already working at NASA, and at 22, he earned his Ph.D. at Princeton. Today, he is a professor at The Ohio State University.
Kim Ung-Yong
This 55-year-old Korean's astounding I.Q. of 210 attests to his prodigious brainpower. He began speaking when he was barely four months old; read Japanese, German, English, and Korean at age 2; took courses as a guest physics student at Hanyang University at age 3; and was invited by NASA to study in the U.S. at 8. Currently, he makes a living as a Civil engineering.
The stories of these three geniuses are nothing short of spellbinding. To think that some of them were already enrolled in college in their early teens and with a Ph.D. in hand in their early 20s is astonishing. I can only imagine how interesting it must be to know them and, even more, to be them!
Had you ever heard of these men before? Would you ever want to be endowed with their high intelligence -- or something close to it?
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