Update on Jacob Barnett – Child Genius

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“Think back…. way back…. to being a small child. To the thing you loved most in the world to do. Write it down, carry it with you, and try. Try to recreate that moment again in your world today. Follow it and see where it leads!” ~Jacob Barnett

If you remember, Jacob is the teenager who has moderate to severe Autism (Asperger’s Syndrome), but with the help of his mother was able to overcome his symptoms to thrive in his education. When he started out in Elementary School he was in Special Education. At that time he was uncommunicative and unable to learn – or so they thought. Now he is expected to attain his PhD in Theoretical Physics by the end of 2014.

He did a pretty amazing Teen Ted Talk which you can find on AngelicView here: “Boy Genius Diagnosed with Autism has Higher IQ than Einstein”

Here is a recent story done on him from The Mind Unleashed:

They said he would never learn, now he’ll teach them a thing or two…

A genius boy whose IQ is higher than Albert Einstein is on his way to possibly winning a Nobel Prize after being set free of special education programs in public schools.

His mother made the decision to take him out of the programs, even after having doctors diagnose him with Aspergers and say that her son Jacob Barnett would never even learn to tie his shoes.

She describes in her book “The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius” that she was afraid of trying to pull him out of school. “For a parent, it’s terrifying to fly against the advice of the professionals. But I knew in my heart that if Jake stayed in special ed, he would slip away.” Jacob was not thriving in special ed classes. He kept turning deeper into himself and was uncommunicative with other people.

His doctors prescribed medical treatment for the boy. When he wasn’t in therapy though, his mother noticed him doing amazing things. “He would create maps all over our floor using Q-tips. They would be maps of places we’ve visited and he would memorize every street.” Jake dropped out of elementary school in the 5th grade. His incredible memory allowed him to attend university classes after he learned all of high school math in two weeks. Now he’s on track to graduate from college at age 14 and working on theories to build on Einstein’s theory of relativity. 60 minutes did a special on Jacob below:

Jacob has been working on the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein and thinks he will be able to amend it or even to prove it wrong. He also expressed doubts about the Big Bang Theory and thinks he will be able to amend it too.

Professor Scott Tremaine of the Institute of Advanced Study wrote “The theory that he’s working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics. Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize”.

Jacob says he picks up information from “the fourth dimension”.

I plan on keeping an eye on this kid! You can follow him on his Facebook Page here: Jacob’s FB Page

**Update July 2014 ⇓

Jacob is very excited about the upcoming year at Perimeter Institute! We would like to take a minute to thank our fans for the patience with our public outreach while he completed the PSI program also called the “hardest graduate program in theoretical physics in the world.” It was an intense year but also an amazing one. Coming up Jake will be doing research in Fermion Doubling in Loop Quantum Gravity, working on a description of quantum tunneling through complex classical trajectories, and even dabbling in a bit of experimental verification of some of his prior work! Time to write some papers again!!!