Some very smart kids

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A 6 year old composer.

Wolfgang at age 6

 At the age of three, Wolfgang Mozart played the harpsichord* and by six, he had written his first musical composition. This was followed by the first symphony at the age of eight and opera at 12. The legendary composer’s musical talents were quickly discovered shortly after his birth in Salzburg, Austria in 1756. As a five-year-old, Mozart performed at the University of Salzburg with the piano and at the imperial court in Vienna the next year. At the age of 14, he set out to Italy to become an opera composer.

He died at the age of 35 and left behind more than 600 pieces

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William Rowan Hamilton  - Multilingual* by the age of five

Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1805, William Rowan Hamilton showed his intellectual* abilities at an early age, mastering Latin, Greek and Hebrew by the age of five.

By the time he was 13, the future mathematician* knew 13 different languages, including Sanscrit, Persian, Italian, Arabic, Syriac and Indian dialects.

At the age of 15, Hamilton found errors while studying the works of French mathematician Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace.

He was appointed Professor of Astronomy, Director of the Dunsink Observatory and the Royal Astronomer of Ireland while he was still studying as a university student.

His greatest contributions includes a theory of dynamics*  and quaternions*, a method used for three-dimensional space in mathematics.  

Ireland’s greatest mathematician was knighted in 1835 and died in 1865.

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Pablo Picasso - The greatest artist of the 20th century

Pablo Picasso at age 15

Born in Spain in 1881, Pablo Picasso developed his skills early, producing complex pieces with the support of his artist father and by the age of 15, his first large oil painting The First Communion was displayed in Barcelona.

The following year, his painting Science and Charity won a gold medal in Malaga and received honorable mention at a national exhibit for the fine arts in Madrid.

His interest in modern art eventually caused a rift between him and his parents.

In the early 20th century, Picasso co-founded the Cubist movement. His technique and style would change often throughout his life.

The artist died in France in 1973.

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William James Sidis—The smartest man who ever lived

At eight years old, William James Sidis proved his mathematics giftedness by developing a new logarithm* able based on the number 12 and gave a lecture at Harvard University a year later. The child genius set the world record as the youngest person to enroll at the prestigious* university at the age of 11 and graduated cum laude five years later.

Sidis is considered to be the smartest man who ever lived, by some, with an estimated IQ of 250-300.

Before his own experience with the terrible twos, Sidis had taught himself to read and shortly thereafter, became fluent in eight languages and wrote four original works of his own by the age of seven.

After an incredible childhood – or lack of it – adulthood was a struggle for Sidis and newspapers at the time reported that his “genius had burned out” due to the numerous obscure blue collared jobs he obtained throughout his life.

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Shakuntala Devi

Born in 1939 in Bangalore, India to a lion tamer father, Shakuntala Devi started her relationship with numbers through card tricks she played with her father at the age of three.

Nicknamed the “Human Computer,” and “Hindu Mathematical Wizardess” Devi demonstrated her mathematics abilities at the University of Mysore and Annamalai University as a child.

Her talent has been mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records several times, such as when she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally and when she found the cube root of 332,812,557 in seconds.

In 2006, she published “In the Wonderland of Numbers,” a story about a girl fascinated with digits.

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Robert "Bobby" Fischer

At 14-years-old, Robert "Bobby" Fischer won the World Chess Championship becoming the youngest winner of the title.  In that year, he captured the attention of the chess world with what has since been dubbed as “The Game of the Century.”

He broke another record the following year when he became the youngest international grandmaster of all times at the age of 15.

In 1972, he became the highest rated player in history with an FIDE rating of 2785.

In 1992, he played a match against an old rival in Yugoslavia and violated a United Nations sanction. Fischer dodged authorities for the next 12 years until his capture in Japan in 2004. He was eventually released in 2005 and granted Icelandic citizenship.

Throughout his chess career, he set many records, including beating two components at a quarter-final and semi-final for the world championship with identical scores.

Fischer died in Iceland in 2008.

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Sufiya Yusof

In 1997, Sufiya Yusof was accepted at Hilda’s College, Oxford to study mathematics at the age of 13. A few years later, the Malaysian intellect disappeared form her flat after a final examination.

She was eventually found working as a waitress in an Internet café and claimed her parent’s intense pressure on her to succeed led to the runaway.

Upon her return, Yusof lived with a foster family and gave her undergraduate degree another attempt in 2003. The following year, she married a lawyer from Oxford and never completed her program. The marriage lasted 13 months.

She is now said to be working as a social worker

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