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London, Aug. 27: An Indian whizkid has become the youngest student to clear Britain’s school leaving exams at age 6. Armaan Genomal cleared his GCSE with a ‘B’ in information and communication technology, completing the course in just nine months — less than half the time it takes 16-year-olds. “It was quite easy. Actually I came out of the exam with a smile. I really liked spreadsheets and things like that. I checked my answers 19 times in the second exam,” said the young pupil of Ryde Teaching Services college in Bushey, Hertfordshire, which is fam-ous for churning out child...

Sincerely, Richard P. Feynman Reviewed by Robert P. Crease Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. Edited by Michelle Feynman, foreword by Timothy Ferris. xxiv + 486 pp. Basic Books, 2005. $26. In her introduction to Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track, Michelle Feynman says of her father's letters that "Taken as a whole, they present his character in a way that we have not seen before." This claim sounds preposterous. We have more information about the character of Richard P. Feynman, it is safe to say, than about that of any other...

LAS VEGAS - The founder of the Minuteman Project rolled into the Sin City on Sunday. Jim Gilchrist, however, didn't come to gamble or get a lap dance. He came to deliver his oft-repeated anti-illegal immigration message. He also spelled out his version of hitting the jackpot: deport the millions of illegal aliens occupying the United States back to Mexico. Send them back by plane or bus, give them money and do it civilly, he said. ''That's what I have in mind,'' Gilchrist told about 200 people who cheered him at the downtown Las Vegas convention center. He made his...

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Like a lot of new college graduates, Promethea Pythaitha is thinking about what to do next. But unlike the other grads, Promethea is just 14. She'll be receiving her diploma during spring commencement at Montana State University. She's the youngest graduate in MSU history. She said she would like to study for four or five more bachelor's degrees. But paying the tuition is a problem. Promethea said she feels discriminated against because she's a genius. She noted that every other kid in America gets to go to school for free until they're 18. While an undergrad, Promethea...

The girl with dark hair falling down to her waist smiled for her graduation photo, looking a lot like any other student about to graduate from Montana State University. She and her mom laughed as they tried to figure out which end of the black cap goes in front. Mom secured the mortarboard with bobby pins to keep it from flying away in the breeze. Then they posed together, touching foreheads. Mom smiled and looked right in her serious girl's eyes and said how very, very proud she was of her daughter. She may look like any other student about...

When Jon Stewart jokes about Republican strategist Karl Rove on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," he usually describes Rove as a "creature of the night" - a shadowy, sinister person who avoids sunlight and traffics in evil. Tonight's edition of the PBS series "Frontline," though, shines a bright light on Rove and his tactics - much more on the campaign strategies than on the man, but nonetheless offering insight into both. And it does so without judgment, letting the record, and many close Rove associates, speak for themselves. The result is "Karl Rove - the Architect" (9 p.m., WNET/Ch. 13),...

Mom Tries to Rationalize Prodigy's Death By SHARON COHEN He started reading as a toddler, played piano at age 3 and delivered a high school commencement speech in cap and gown when he was just 10 - his eyes barely visible over the podium. Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy: He composed and recorded music, won piano competitions, breezed through college courses with an off-the-charts IQ and mastered everything from archery to photography, hurtling through life precociously. Then, last Tuesday, Brandenn was found dead in his Nebraska home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. He was just...

By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer He started reading as a toddler, played piano at age 3 and delivered a high school commencement speech in cap and gown when he was just 10 — his eyes barely visible over the podium. Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy: He composed and recorded music, won piano competitions, breezed through college courses with an off-the-charts IQ and mastered everything from archery to photography, hurtling through life precociously. Then, last Tuesday, Brandenn was found dead in his Nebraska home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. He was just 14. He left...

Neb. Prodigy, 14, Dies in Apparent Suicide By JOE RUFF : Associated Press Writer Mar 18, 2005 : 8:04 pm ET OMAHA, Neb. -- A musical prodigy who completed high school at age 10 apparently killed himself at 14, authorities said. Brandenn E. Bremmer, who taught himself how to read at 18 months and began playing the piano at 3, was found dead Tuesday at his home in southwest Nebraska with a gunshot wound to the head, sheriff's officials said. Patricia Bremmer said her son showed no signs of depression, had just finished the art for the cover of a...

A genius explainsDaniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism. Interview by Richard JohnsonRichard JohnsonSaturday February 12, 2005GuardianDaniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with...

London - Red hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, according to a new study by British scientists. Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford were quoted by The Times as saying the so-called "ginger gene" which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100 000 years old. They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200 000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40 000 years ago. Rosalind Harding, the...

Composing can be a lonely job. Hour after hour, the composer sits at a piano, trying to bring out the music in his head. But for Aaron Copland, composition was about the people. Working with people, learning from them, befriending them, organizing and mentoring them. His enthusiasm for combining music with humanity assured his place in music history almost as much as his compositions. "As organizer, teacher, propagandist, critic, lecturer and expositor, he has been by far the most voluble, articulate and respected American musician of his time," wrote Harold Schonberg in The New York Times in 1970. His ballets...

PHILADELPHIA -- The David Rittenhouse Laboratory is home to the University of Pennsylvania's Physics and Astronomy department, where courses such as "Physics 514: Mechanics, Fluids, Chaos" and "Physics 632: Relativistic Field Theory II" are taught. I sat in Thursday on a course so complicated that I was completely lost just listening to the professor explain when next week's midterm would be. In other words, these are some pretty smart people. And as such, they are eminently qualified to address the issue that is worrying Eagles fans this week as the Super Bowl nears: Is New England coach Bill Belichick really...

WHEN Kenneth W. Jennings III, '00, first learned he had been selected to compete in the long-running television game show Jeopardy!, the Murray, Utah, software engineer had three weeks to prepare. He began by watching the program while standing behind his recliner to get the feel of a podium and working on his timing by holding a child's toy about the same size as a buzzer. That simple strategy offers a small glimpse into the seemingly mild- mannered but highly competitive player who, in an unmatched six-month winning streak, became a game-show legend, smashing a bevy of records and sending...

Bulgaria - Bulgaria's cleverest woman says she has been inundated with job offers after reports she couldn't find work. Daniela Simidchieva, 44, has three degrees and her 192 IQ matches that of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie. She says she was thrilled to receive so many offers for lucrative employment after years of scraping a living for her and her family in jobs that paid no more than £70 (about R800) a month. She has landed a new job after an executive at the Centre for Analysis and Marketing in the capital Sophia learnt of her plight after seeing...

Friday, January 7, 2005 Pa. boy, 13, scores perfect 1600 on SAT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MECHANICSBURG, Pa. -- A 13-year-old boy has scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT, a standardized test usually given to college-bound high school seniors. "I was pretty surprised and happy," said Lee Kennedy-Shaffer, an eighth-grader at Mechanicsburg Middle School. "I did not think I would score that high." He got the perfect score for a test he took in December as part of a program for gifted children. He wasn't the first in his family to get a perfect score, but he was the first...

Following his remarkable run as the "Jeopardy!" whiz, Ken Jennings is famous enough to be trailed by a fan in the subway, is penning a book and, of course, has $2,520,700 in winnings to decide how to spend. What he doesn't have anymore, after his 74-game winning streak came to an end in an episode televised Tuesday, is a chance to play his favorite game. "I miss it quite a bit," Jennings told The Associated Press. "It didn't really hit me that that was going to be the hard part. I thought the hard part would be the loss." He...

A boy genius who transferred seven years ago from a California public school to college and his single mother are seeking compensation from the state for having to pay for university and other special schooling since 1997. Leila J. Levi and her son, Levi M. Clancy, of Venice Beach, Calif., say in a civil lawsuit that state public schools failed to meet their statutory obligation to provide a "free and equal educational opportunity" to Levi, now 14 and described in court documents as "highly gifted." The case has turned reluctant heads among public-education officials regarding the treatment of highly gifted...

FRANKFURT, Germany - A 38-year-old with degrees in psychology, education and computer science needed only 11.8 seconds to calculate the 13th root of a 100-digit number in his head, setting a new record, organizers said. Onlookers with electronic calculators needed more time to solve the problem that Gert Mittring figured on his own, with two umpires checking the time, at a math museum in the small German town of Giessen near Frankfurt in western Germany. "I first think of an elegant problem-solving algorithm and the result comes immediately," said Mittring, who beat the previous record of 13.55 seconds, set by...

Senator John Kerry was given a stark warning yesterday that President George W Bush is an unorthodox genius at live television who will spurn a debate with his opponent and instead appeal directly to viewers in Thursday's presidential showdown.