Child prodigy set to get Bachelor’s degree
LONDON — He doesn’t play chess or any musical instruments. But he loves “Fortnite” and “Minecraft” and watches Netflix.
Soon, Laurent Simons, nine, of Belgium will become one of the youngest people in the world to graduate from a university. For this, his teachers and others have called him a genius.
He simply says, “I’m quite lazy.” That’s because he’s not into sports.
”A lot of people have stereotypes about young geniuses,” his father, Alexander, a dentist, said in a phone interview.
That’s because the world has long been fascinated by prodigies celebrated for their ability to master an instrument, graduate at a young age or achieve outstanding sports performances.
Mozart composed music at age five. Picasso was 9 years old when he made his first painting.
But in an era when social media carries a certain cachet and influencers make gobs of money posing with products, Laurent is not your typical child prodigy.
He’s into Instagram, for one. And as of Friday, he had more than 13,000 followers.
Laurent, who was born in Ostende, Belgium, studies electrical engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He entered when he was eight and is set to complete a three-year program in 10 months.
If all goes well and he completes his final project — about a brain-connected electrical chip — he will walk out a graduate in December. ”Then, I want to study medicine, and do a Ph.D. and make artificial organs,” he said.