Math Prodigy Proud of His Autism

Author: mom_to_one, 01 17th, 2012

As I was winding down on Sunday evening I had “60 Minutes” playing in the background. My ears perked up when the interviewer started a segment about Jake Barnett, a math prodigy who is proud of his autism. At only 13 years of age he attends college – he began auditing classes when he was 8 – and does paid scientific research.

In the interview he seemed very outgoing, like a typical 10 year-old, albeit with an incredible gift. This belies the fact that at age two he began regressing and was diagnosed with autism. His parents got him all sorts of autism treatments, but what helped most was allowing him to follow his math and science passions. In the interview Jake said, “I believe [autism] is the reason why I am in college and I am so successful. It is the rise as to my love for math and science and astronomy. And it’s the reason why I care. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten this far.”


Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.