15 Incredible Prodigies Who Showed Unprecedented Talent and Drive

Michael Kearney, a child prodigy spoke his first words at 4 months and graduated college with a degree in Anthropology at 10 years old. 

A math prodigy named George Green operated a windmill for 20 years. Almost completely self-taught, he could not attend university until almost 40 years old. Green nonetheless graduated from Cambridge as one of the top math students; Einstein later said that he was 20 years ahead of his time.

There is a blind, autistic musical prodigy named Derek Paravicini who can play anything he hears but can barely count 10.

William James Sidis, a child prodigy who was thought to have been the smartest man who ever lived, escaped the limelight and worked blue collar jobs, secretly writing thousands of manuscripts that have never been read.

Brandenn E. Bremmer was a musical prodigy who taught himself to read at 18 months and played the piano at the age of 3. He completed high school at the age of 10 and committed suicide at the age of 14.

A 16-year-old (as of 2019) Canadian tech prodigy named Tanmay Bakshi started using computers at the age of 5, launched his first app at the age of 9, and has been working with IBM’s AI and cognitive APIs for a couple of years now.

A child prodigy named Christian Heinrich Heineken by at the age of 1, read the Pentateuch, and by the age of 4 wrote the "History of Denmark" and recited it when visiting the King of Denmark later the same year. 

Child prodigies Tanishq Abraham (born June 2003) and his sister Tiara (born December 2005) are the youngest siblings to have joined Mensa at 4 years of age. Tanishq has since completed one-third of an associate degree with a 4.0-grade point average at just 9 years of age.

In 1999, a child chess prodigy named Joshua Waitzkin, a subject of the film "Searching for Bobby Fischer", gave up chess and took up Aikido. In 2004, he won the world champion title in the competitive sport of Taiji Push Hands.

Shakuntala Devi was a child prodigy. She solved a math problem (the 23rd root of a number with more than 100 digits) faster than the computer of that time (1977).