MD at 21; already had a PhD!

Sho Yano.
Youngest MD in University of Chicago history, this week.
Had already earned a PhD in molecular genetics.
Interning in pediatric neurology.
Accomplished composer and musician. Black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
What a guy.
Boy prodigy now a doctor and a young man - Page 2 - chicagotribune.com

 

Gosh! That's even younger than a young lady I once met at a Denny's near Seattle. She had a PhD in Psychology at age 22 and was looking at med schools.

 

Wow! That is impressive, I wish my son is going to be something similar to that. Wait, wasn't that Doogie Howser better than this guy? lol

 

I remember reading about this young man back when he was first admitted to medical school. It's great to hear that things are working out for him. All too often, child prodigies do not have stories with a happy ending.

 

Human development, maturity and life experience are important to. We all have to go through that development regardless of our intelligence level. Lots of us go through unhappy things in life and fail at something. Unfortunately child prodigeies go through it and are analyzed publically for it.

 

For "prodigies," both this young man and his sister (I think she's 17) seem to be pretty well-rounded. Sho Yano's accomplishments in Tae Kwon Do have been mentioned, as have his musical abilities. His sister is also a skilled musician and I believe she has already earned two degrees. It was my pleasure to hear her play (on TV) this morning.

Johann

 

Their sure do have some impressive credentials.

 

Good for him that he is able to focus his abilities.

I read about a young man who had his degrees at 14 or 15. His parents asked him what he wanted to do now that he had grduated university. He requested to go to high school. They ended up using him as a teacher's aide even though he was enrolled as a student.

 

Sounds like a good guy; you would think he would be a little stuck up.

 

Has anyone ever done much follow-up research on a former child prodigy? Did they actually do something remarkable? Cure a deadly disease, create an alternate form of cheap renewable energy?

When is too much intelligence a detriment? For instance if you have a 130 IQ you create Facebook, cure Polio or something else. When your IQ is 145 you solve "interesting" problems in the newspaper.

Any of these kids end up happy and well adjusted?

 

I bet he's also socially retarded and will never have a girlfriend.

I wouldn't trade my childhood/teenage years/early 20s for all the Phds and MD degrees in the world.

This is life and we only live it once.

I'll settle for my graduate degree that was earned in my mid 20s.

 

033: "Has anyone ever done much follow-up research on a former child prodigy? Did they actually do something remarkable?..."

This is a matter that has intrigued me since I was Director of the Center for the Gifted Child in San Francisco many years ago. At least 2 major longitudinal studies. Leta Hollingworth identified 12 children in the New York area with measured IQs over 180. She (and then her heirs) followed them for many years. The relevant book is "Children Above 180 IQ." And the Terman study of gifted youth at Stanford followed a great many more, IQ above 150, with special attention to those over 180.

In the Hollingworth group, two died quite young, and of the other ten, as I recall, all but one had decent careers, but nothing extraordinary. (One, I think, ended up sorting mail in the post office.) Here's a fairly detailed summary of the two studies:

A follow-up of subjects scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's genetic studies of genius

The abstract says: "Although there are numerous studies of gifted students, there have been no studies following up the very high IQ students into adulthood. Using the Terman files, 26 subjects with scores above 180 IQ were compared with 26 randomly selected subjects from Terman's sample. Findings were generally that the extra IQ points made little difference and that extremely high IQ does not seem to indicate "genius" in the commonly understood sense of the word."

 

Thanks Dr. Bear, I appreciate the links. Very interesting reading indeed. I bet we see more IQ makes a difference when we compare scores at the lower range of the curve. Say 100-125 versus those with scores below 100. Too bad most social scientist won't touch a study like that with a ten-foot pole.

 

A chemsitry professor of mine once said that the winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry isn't the smartest chemist out there; He is the one who sticks with it. That isn't to say that intelligence doesn't play a role, just that intelligence isn't the only factor in achieving greatness, success, etc.

In any case, I wish all the best for the bright young man that is the topic of this thread.

 

Noted, and I'd argue that the measures of success generally accepted by the median of society aren't necessarily the measures of success that someone who is not a member of that intellectual median would aspire to.

- Steady work - check
- Pension - check
- Normal routine - check
- Anonymity - check

All the traits of a postal job and quite frankly, I can't even begin to put a dollar figure on anonymity. I'd pay to be off the grid. Seems pretty brilliant to me given the benefit of hindsight and the time period.

 

He's a 21-year-old doctor with no student debt, in a competitive residency program. Yeah, what a loser!