23 Genius Prodigies That Have Challenged the World

Ted Kaczynski or The Unabomber was a math prodigy, started at Harvard at the age of 16, and received his Masters and his Ph.D. in mathematics by the time he was 25. He also had an IQ of 167.

Audrey Hepburn was a ballet prodigy as a child, but after 5 years of malnutrition due to German occupation during World War 2, she was permanently too weak to dance, so she turned to acting.

A child prodigy named Ruth Lawrence passed the Oxford University mathematics exam at the age of 10, coming first out of all 530 candidates. She then completed the degree a year early by age 13.

Child prodigy Kim Ung-Yong, the man with the world's highest IQ was fluent in 4 languages by the age of 4 and began attending university the same year.

Flavor Flav is a musical prodigy. By the time, he started performing with Public Enemy, he was proficient in 15 different instruments, from drums to oboe.

László Polgár is a Hungarian psychologist who believed “geniuses are not born, they are made.” He raised all 3 of his daughters to play chess every day. All 3 became chess prodigies and grandmasters.

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.