2+2=4, 4+4=8...the square root of pi is 1.772453851? They do surgery at age seven, go to college at nine, and graduate from medical school at 21. Take a look at how these six kid geniuses are changing the world—shortly after they enter into it.
Photo: Getty Images
Elise Tan Roberts
Elise Tan Roberts isn't your average kid. At just two years old, Elise had an estimated I.Q. of 156 and was the youngest child to ever become a member of Mensa, the international society for geniuses. According to the Daily Mail, Elise was little more than five months old when she called her father “Dada” for the first time. Three months later, she was walking. Before her first birthday, she could recognize her written name, and by 16 months, she could count to ten. Her specialty? This little genius likes to recite the names of the world's capital cities.
Akrit Jaswal is from a remote village at the foothills of the Himalayas. When he was five years old, he was reading Shakespeare. At age six, Akrit was teaching English and math, and when he was seven, he performed surgery on a young burn victim. Akrit was India's youngest university student and is hailed as one of the smartest people in India—a country of more than a billion people.
At age two, Jake Barnett was diagnosed with autism. He was put in special education classes, but it quickly became apparent that Jake was more advanced than his classmates. In fact, he was a math genius. His IQ is 170—higher than Albert Einstein's. At nine, he built mathematical models that reportedly expanded upon Einstein's theory of relativity. At 12 years old, Jake enrolled in Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis as a full-time college student and soon after landed a paid research position in the field of condensed matter physics. You can watch Jake's inspiring TEDxTeen talk here.
You think four is too young for your child to begin kindergarten? Try sending your kid to college at nine! Sho Yano, who embarked on his college career at nine years old and attended medical school at age 12, is about to become the youngest person to earn an M.D. at the University of Chicago. Yano has received a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and cell biology and will soon graduate from the university's Pritzker School of Medicine.
In 2006, a three-year-old girl from Moldova, Cleopatra Stratan, performed a two-hour long, 28-song, live concert in Bucharest, Romania, becoming the youngest person ever to perform live for that length of time in front of an audience. She is also the youngest artist to ever hit #1—in any country. Hear her hit song, "Ghita," here.
Marco Calasan of Macedonia is the youngest Microsoft systems engineer in the world. According to CNN, the 11-year-old has four Microsoft certificates and wrote an informative 312-page book on Microsoft's Windows 7. Not only is he a computer genius, but he also has a knack for foreign languages.
