I’m sure there’s been quite a few doctoral thesises to make significant contributions to science, but what about exams on lower levels? And not just in science, any great novelists writing wonderful poems while in elementary school would count, too.
The closest thing I can think of is the philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe’s rhyming law exam (it passed), but I’d be even more impressed if, say, Einstein delivered a rough draft of relativity for his physics 101.
In American education, those would not be called “exams”, which usually means a timed test. They would be called “papers” or “term papers”.
Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 1 at the age of eight. Does that count?
exams mean the same here. but anything would be of interest, i’m really just looking for unexpectedly good results, so mozart definately counts.
How about this. A professor gives his class an example of a great unsolved maths problem that has been puzzling mathematicians for years. George Dantzig arrives late for class. He sees the problem, and incorrectly assumes that it’s a homework assignment. He works out a solution and hands it in.
Carl Friedrich Gauss was recognized as a genius when he finished in record time the busywork the teach was having the class do: The teacher was having all the students add the numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss looked at the problem, did a quick calculation, and walked up with the answer. When the teacher asked how he finished so quickly, he replied that adding up all the numbers from 1 to 100 was the same as adding 1+100 + 2+99, +3+98… 50 times or 101*50.
They started to give him special math instruction after that…
(or so I’ve heard…)
Maybe not quite as much of a hard, exact science(economics) as you were looking for, but Fred Smith wrote a paper on an analysis of the Ecomomics of the Shipping industry. Later he proved he was right making millions after founding Federal express based on his findings.
Here’s a list of child prodigies:
Urban Legend has it that Fred Smith proposed the idea for FedEx in his MBA dissertation, and that his committee gave him a C because they thought the idea was ludicrous. I was curious about this so I checked on Snopes and it didn’t say anything. In this article he says that he never went to grad school and that the legend about the C comes from an off the cuff remark he once made about probably getting a C on it. As wolfman states, he did however write a term paper in an undergraduate class that had the inklings of the FedEx concept.
There’s Gregory Watson. In 1982, he was taking a government class at the University of Texas and did a paper of an unratified proposal for a constitutional amendment from 1789. During his research, he realized that unlike most amendment proposals, this one did not have a built in deadline on its enactment so it was theoretically still pending. Watson got a C on his paper but subsequently started a letter writing campaign on behalf of the proposed amendment. As a result, several state legislatures voted in favor of it and it was ratified in 1992 as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.
Personally, I think Watson got ripped. Getting the Constitution amended should be an automatic A in any government class.
You win!
Claude Shannon did a huge amount of work in computer science, electrical engineering, and information theory in his lifetime, but his Master’s Thesis at 21 was an amazing accomplishment to start his career. It described how to use electronic circuits to implement logic. This forms the basis for pretty much all digital electronics (e.g. most computers).
Fred Smith wrote a paper for an economics class in college describing an overnight delivery service, for which he reportedly earned a C grade. He later put the idea into practice (and called the company Federal Express).
Two problems, according to Wikipedia.
Fred Smith is interviewed here
That’s pretty close to the horse’s mouth
Incidentally I teach in an MBA program and I know of none it which a dissertation is written. Sloan school (MIT) used to require a masters thesis for its SM degree, but they give a more traditional MBA now as well. (I think you can still write a thesis if you wish in place of a number of courses.)
Brian Josephson did pretty well-he received the 1973 Nobel prize in physics for his (mostly) undergraduate work: the Josephson effect.
He also wrote dozens (possibly hundreds) of pieces while still a child which are actually regularly performed, too. Operas included.
Another is Shostakovich’s first symphony, a graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatoire, and I don’t think there’s many other such compositions which see regular action. Admittedly not a product of childhood, though: he was 19.
Not quite what you are looking for, but Prof JRRT wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit” in some student’s test booklet when got bored grading them. (does anyone know which student?)
Brian
N91WP writes:
> Not quite what you are looking for, but Prof JRRT wrote “In a hole in the ground
> there lived a Hobbit” in some student’s test booklet when got bored grading
> them. (does anyone know which student?)
No, and in any case he was in his thirties (or just possibly his forties) when this presumably happened. We have no confirmation of this story except for one time when he mentioned it. The student didn’t see the test booklet afterwards. Even if it’s true, it had very little effect on how The Hobbit was written. Tolkien drew on many sources for inspiration, and the fact (if it’s true) that he wrote the first sentence down at that point is mostly irrelevant to the creation of the book.