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7 Notable Child Prodigies

7 Notable Child Prodigies
Gifted kids don't always grow up to be successful adults. These seven did. 
 

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the ultimate child prodigy, beginning to play harpsichord songs at the age of four and compose rudimentary music at the age of five. The Mozart family embarked on the first of multiple travels when the young marvel was seven years old to showcase his and his elder sister Maria Anna ("Nannerel"), who was also extraordinarily talented. There are several accounts regarding the young Mozart's astounding musical ability, memory, and compositional brilliance. 
 
One incident from Mozart's 14-year-old years, on a trip to the Vatican in 1770, sticks out. The narrative centers around Gregorio Allegri's well-known Miserere, a piece of choral music from the late Renaissance (1582–1652). Allegri, a priest and choir member of the Sistine Chapel, wrote an arrangement of the 50th Psalm that was so beloved by those who lived in the Vatican that it eventually became illegal to record it for performance abroad. There were only ever three authorized copies produced. During Holy Week in 1770, Mozart and his father attended a performance of the Miserere. When Mozart was unable to sleep that night, he got up and entertained himself by typing the entire piece from memory. A few days later, he returned to hear the piece again and used the performance to fix a few mistakes in his copy that he had hidden under his hat.
 
Since then, musicologists have noted that Mozart's memory trick was amazing but perhaps not quite as miraculous as it initially appears. Given how repetitive The Miserere is, Mozart's transcription most likely omitted the spontaneous decorative parts that would have been included in the original performance. Even so, a 12- to 15-minute modern performance requires that the audience follow music composed for two choirs, one with five parts and the other with four, which are combined at the conclusion in nine-part counterpoint. 
 

2. John Von Neumann

Some people possess more mental capacity than they can possibly use. According to his biographers, the Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann could joke with his father in classical Greek at the age of six. The little genius would memories pages from the phone book as a party trick and either recite the entire page verbatim or respond to questions about the names, numbers, and addresses. As an adult, von Neumann earned the reputation of being the greatest mathematician of his day and made significant contributions to computer science, physics, economics, and mathematics. 
 

3. Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz,

The presence of extraordinary talent is not always apparent in the expected places. Juana Ramrez de Asbaje was born to unmarried parents in the village of San Miguel Nepantla in the Viceroyalty of New Spain around 1648 or 1651 (documents dispute on the exact year) (now Mexico). She was gifted intellectually from an early age, reading at the age of three, but she was unable to pursue formal education due to her gender and her family's financial situation. She was eventually relocated to Mexico City, where she had access a library, to live with her maternal grandparents. She devoured books and took 20 classes to fully master Latin. 
 
When she was eight years old, she composed her first dramatic poetry. When she was about 16 years old, she went to the viceroy of New Spain's court as a lady of the viceroy's wife after word of her great knowledge spread. The viceroy planned a public demonstration when a group of roughly 40 professors grilled Juana on their respective fields of expertise to display Juana's astounding erudition. Onlookers were astounded by the depth and range of her knowledge. 
 
Juana, who had no desire to get married and was in need of more books to read, joined a convent in 1669, taking the name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She kept writing plays, poems, and philosophic essays. She also gathered one of the largest collections of books and scientific equipment in the Americas at the time. She is regarded as one of the most significant authors of Mexican literature's Baroque era today. 
 

4. Srinivasa Ramanujan

7 Notable Child Prodigies
Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the finest self-taught mathematicians of all time, was born into poverty and raised in Kumbakonam, India. Ramanujan, a brilliant student with a remarkable memory, began his ascent into the highest levels of mathematics in 1903, when he was 16 years old and was able to borrow a worn-out copy of an English textbook of advanced mathematics. Despite the book's flaws, Ramanujan avidly studied it, taking notes in journals he always carried with him. Due to his lack of interest in any other academic pursuits, he was unable to accept a scholarship to the University of Madras in 1904. 
 
His obsession with arithmetic actually hindered him in other aspects of his life. Ramanujan began submitting his work to mathematicians in England when he was working as a clerk and asking for their input. Some didn't reply. Then, in 1913, Ramanujan sent a packet of papers to Godfrey Hardy, a mathematician at Cambridge University. Hardy initially believed there was a scam or hoax. There were some formulas that were well known. But he also discovered other aspects that he thought were more peculiar and perhaps significant. 
 
Through their letters, Hardy persuaded Ramanujan to visit Cambridge in 1914. He was tutored by Hardy there, and they worked together on research. Over the following few years, Ramanujan wrote a ton of works and was chosen as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1918. However, his already precarious condition continued to deteriorate, and he passed away in 1919 at the age of 32. 
 

5. Stevie Wonder 

(Born Steveland Judkins Morris) learned to write music, sing, and play the piano, organ, harmonica, and drums as a young boy despite being born blind and growing up in poverty. At the age of 12, Little Stevie Wonder started making music recordings and giving live performances. He immediately made a name for himself as a serious musician who combined inventive songwriting with a command of a variety of musical genres, including rhythm & blues, soul, funk, rock, and jazz, despite the fact that his stage name implied a novelty child performance. 
 
By the time he turned 21, he had penned or co-penned more than a dozen popular songs. At the age of only 38, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. 
 

6. Blaise Pascal

Math was not at all taught to Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher in the 17th century. He had a private education from his father, the mathematician and tax collector Étienne, who believed that it was best for kids to first learn Greek and Latin before moving on to arithmetic and science later in life. He ordered the removal of all the math books from their home in order to do this. But according to a biography that his sister Gilberte wrote, Blaise managed to become a math prodigy without ever receiving any formal instruction.
 
At the age of 12, he "found" a mathematical fact that had been concealed from him but was generally known to mathematicians: the interior angles of a triangle always add up to the sum of two right angles. Étienne gave in and started introducing mathematical ideas after seeing his son had a remarkable potential. Essai pour les coniques, Blaise's first original mathematical work, was published about three years later (1640; Essay on Conic Sections). René Descartes, who was envious of Étienne, claimed that Étienne had written the article and misrepresented it as his son's work. 
 
Blaise created a mechanical adding and subtracting machine two years later. It was the first calculator to be produced in sizable quantities and the first to be used commercially. Pascal became known as one of Europe's top mathematicians and scientists in the 1640s and 1650s, and he also wrote on religious and philosophical issues. Age 39, he passed away in 1662.
 

7. Judit Polgár

Judit Polgár stands out among a list of kid prodigies. László, her father, an educational psychologist, believed that high mental abilities were more a product of adequate instruction than of innate aptitude. He also penned a book titled Raise a Genius in which he asserted that he could make any kid into a prodigy. The three László daughters served as the test subjects for his instructional vision, and all three turned out to be chess prodigies. His ideas may have seemed extravagant and absurd at the time, but perhaps less so now. The Polgár sisters upset the male-dominated world of competitive chess by compelling many to reevaluate the widely held belief that male players were inherently superior. They were raised in an environment where chess practice was constant. 
 
In January 1991, Susan, the eldest daughter, became the first woman to ever achieve a grandmaster rank determined using the same criteria as male players. Susan rose to the position of top-ranked female player in the world at the age of 15. She was quickly surpassed, though, by Judit, the youngest of the Polgár sisters. Judit, then 15 years old, broke Bobby Fischer's previous record for the youngest player to achieve grandmaster status in December 1991. (Since then, multiple times have her record been surpassed).
 
Judit avoided women's-only gatherings throughout her professional life. Instead, she concentrated on competing against the finest male players in the world, frequently succeeding. She became the first woman to ever place in the top ten when she rose to eighth place in the 2005 chess player rankings.

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