Child prodigies and children who have exceptional talents frequently figure in entertainment media. [1] [2] This article indicates some examples of characters cited as child prodigies in such media.
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for the future, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabilities of competitors. Genius is associated with intellectual ability and creative productivity. The term genius can also be used to refer to people characterised by genius, and/or to polymaths who excel across many subjects.
A child prodigy is a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful work in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to describe young people who are extraordinarily talented in some field.
Walter Henry Breen Jr. was an American numismatist, and writer as well as the husband of author Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was aware of his child molestation activities. He was known among coin collectors for writing Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins. "Breen numbers", from his encyclopedia, are widely used to attribute varieties of coins. He was also known for activity in the science fiction fan community and for his writings in defense of pederasty as a NAMBLA activist.
Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, with various consequences studied in longitudinal studies of giftedness over the last century. These consequences sometimes includes stigmatizing and social exclusion. There is no generally agreed definition of giftedness for either children or adults, but most school placement decisions and most longitudinal studies over the course of individual lives have followed people with IQs in the top 2.5 percent of the population—that is, IQs above 130. Definitions of giftedness also vary across cultures.
A mental calculator or human calculator is a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation.
Little Man Tate is a 1991 American drama film directed by Jodie Foster from a screenplay written by Scott Frank. The film stars Adam Hann-Byrd as Fred Tate, a seven-year-old child prodigy who struggles to self-actualize in social and psychological settings that largely fail to accommodate his intelligence. It also stars Foster, Dianne Wiest, Harry Connick Jr., David Hyde Pierce, Debi Mazar and P.J. Ochlan.
William James Sidis was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills, for which he was active as a mathematician, linguist, historian, and author. He wrote the book The Animate and the Inanimate, published in 1925, in which he speculated about the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics.
Michael Kevin Kearney is an American college teaching assistant and game show contestant. He is known for setting several world records related to graduating at a young age, as well as teaching college students while still a teenager. Additionally, as a game-show contestant, he has won over one million dollars.
Mr. Young is a Canadian television series that premiered on March 1, 2011, on YTV. The series was filmed in Burnaby, British Columbia. The series was created by Dan Signer, and stars Brendan Meyer, Matreya Fedor, and Gig Morton as attendees of Finnegan High School. Further main cast includes Kurt Ostlund, Emily Tennant, and Milo Shandel. Set between 2010 and 2014, the show follows the lives of the students and faculty of Finnegan High over a four-year period, where the characters deal with such topics as romantic relationships, friendships, acceptance, self-worth and the importance of community. The first half of Season 1 is set during the main characters’ Grade 9 year, while the remainder of Season 1 until the end of Season 2 is set during their Grade 10 year. The remainder of the series spans their Grade 11 year, with the final two episodes being set in June 2014, shortly before the students graduate Grade 12. The show ended its run on November 28, 2013, with three seasons and 80 episodes.
Adragon De Mello is an American prodigy who graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in computational mathematics in 1988, at age 11. At the time, he was the youngest college graduate in U.S. history, a record that was later broken in 1994 by Michael Kearney. His early achievements may have been more due to endless hard work than to inherent intellectual capabilities.
Kim Ung-Yong is a South Korean civil engineer. During his youth, he was recognized as a child prodigy with the highest recorded IQ having scored above 210 on the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale.
IQ classification is the practice of categorizing human intelligence, as measured by intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, into categories such as "superior" or "average".
Sheldon Lee Cooper, Ph.D., Sc.D., is a fictional character in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory and its spinoff series Young Sheldon, portrayed by actors Jim Parsons and Iain Armitage respectively. For his portrayal, Parsons won four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a TCA Award, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. The character's childhood is the focus of Young Sheldon, in which he grows up in East Texas with his family Missy Cooper, George Cooper Sr., George Cooper Jr., Mary Cooper and his MeeMaw as a child prodigy.
Sho Timothy Yano is an American physician. Yano is a former child prodigy and has an estimated IQ of 200.
Scorpion is an American action drama television series created by Nick Santora for CBS. The series stars Elyes Gabel, Katharine McPhee, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Jadyn Wong, Ari Stidham, and Robert Patrick. Very loosely based on the life of its executive producer and self-proclaimed computer expert Walter O'Brien, the series centers on O'Brien and his friends helping to solve complex global problems and save lives. The series premiered on September 22, 2014. On October 27, 2014, CBS placed a full-season episode order for the first season. In March 2017, CBS renewed the series for a fourth season, which premiered on September 25, 2017.
Walter O'Brien is the fictional lead character in the American drama television series, Scorpion. The character is inspired by the Irish businessman and information technologist of the same name. The character, played by actor Elyes Gabel, follows a loose trajectory of Walter O'Brien's real-life exploits that thwart terrorism and disasters in each episode of the series.
Shaira Ana Teresiana Luna is a Filipina photographer. She, among others, was known as a "gifted child" and a "Promil kid", having been featured in Wyeth's infant formula ad in 1995.
Young Sheldon is an American coming-of-age sitcom television series created by Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro that aired on CBS from September 25, 2017, to May 16, 2024. The series is a spin-off prequel to The Big Bang Theory that takes place during the late 80s and early 90s and follows child prodigy Sheldon Cooper as he grows up with his family in East Texas. Iain Armitage stars as Sheldon, alongside Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Montana Jordan, Raegan Revord, and Annie Potts. Jim Parsons, who portrayed the adult Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, narrated the series and was also an executive producer.