12-year-old Laurent Simons from Ostend, northern Belgium, has a master’s degree in quantum physics. It took the boy only six months to complete his master’s studies. His thesis was on the analogous Hawking radiation in Bose-Einstein condensates. I started my studies at the beginning of the academic year, ie in October of last year. In the first semester, I passed all the exams for my master’s degree. Yes, I did everything in 6 months, as well as various courses and my research training, but I had to wait another 6 months to defend my master’s thesis – said Laurent in an interview with Hubert Kijek. The 12-year-old admitted that he entered primary school at the age of four and completed his first year of school in the same way as his peers. Then I noticed that I passed my exams easily and read books very quickly. Then I switched to the individual learning course and started learning the core curriculum faster than my classmates. At the age of six I finished primary school and went to secondary school. A year and a half later, when I was eight years old, I graduated from high school. I would like to emphasize one thing here, so as not to surprise anyone, I did not skip any subject or exam. He explained that it was not an acronym. The boy’s goal is to make people immortal because his grandparents suffer from heart disease and he would like to help them. – I am convinced that to some extent we can achieve immortality. I imagine this problem as a scatter puzzle. Each part of the puzzle is different, it must be matched accordingly. Physics, Chemistry, Biology or Mathematics – I want to learn more about these sciences in order to integrate them and create new ideas. I started with physics, but there is still a lot of work ahead of me – he said. When asked how he reacted to the huge media coverage, he replied that he didn’t mind and that it was great to have the opportunity to meet journalists from all over the world and be on the front pages of newspapers.
