Laurent
Simons has an IQ of at least 145 and will complete his electrical engineering
degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology in December.
“I
really want to go to California, the weather is nice there,” said Laurent, who
is half Dutch and half Belgian and lives in Amsterdam.
But
Laurent’s father Alexander told the Telegraph his son could be tempted
away from the California sun by the dreaming spires of Oxford.
Professors
from the US’s best universities are already courting Laurent, who loves playing
video games like Fortnite and Minecraft, with offers of Master's
courses and even PhD programmes. Some have already given him homework
after informal Skype interviews.
“There
is definitely competition to get him on the course.If he goes to America then
we will go out with him and split our time there with his grandparents,”
Alexander, 37, said.
“But
Oxford and Cambridge are also in the major league” the Belgian dentist said,
“and it would be very much more convenient for us.”
One
of Laurent’s mentors, a Switzerland based professor in mathematics, went to
Oxford. Maths is Laurent’s favourite subject, he said, because “it is so it's
so vast, there's statistics, geometry, algebra".
John
Wilkes, who went to Jesus College and is now Dean of Academics at the American
University in Switzerland, taught Laurent in summer courses.
He told the
Telegraph, “He really was a delight to tutor and very well balanced, able to be
like a child and an adult at the same time.
“I taught
him when he was six and we studied at the level of a 16 year-old,” he said, “I
really would recommend Oxford for him.”
“He would
develop somewhere the environment is
about learning rather than being taught. For someone like Laurent that
is ideal.”
Alexander
added, “Laurent works best when he has a good feeling with someone and clicks
with them. That is the most important thing we are looking for.”
Amazingly
Laurent only began his university studies in March and has nearly completed in
just nine months. His tutor said he was three times more intelligent than his
next cleverest student.
Laurent, who
dreams of becoming a heart surgeon or astronaut when he grows up, will smash the
world record held since 1994 by Michael Kearney, who graduated from the
University of Alabama at the age of ten.
Laurent
finished secondary school aged eight after completing six years of education in
just a year and a half. His father and mother Lydia, 29, an office manager,
watched him collect his diploma in a hall full of 18-year-olds.
It was his
grandparents who first noticed that Laurent was gifted. They looked after the
wunderkind while his father and mother ran the dentist business.
“His
grandparents told us but we didn’t take it too seriously. We thought all
grandparents say that,” said Alexander, “But then he went to school and he
started going faster and faster.”
His
grandparents also inspired Laurent to want to revolutionise heart surgery
because they have cardiac problems.
By the time
he got to university Laurent, who has a photographic memory, was already used
to being the youngest student in the room.
Professor
Peter Baltus teaches Laurent at the university in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
“He is three times smarter than the best student I have met in my long career.
He achieves a level of solutions that many adult students never reach,” he
said.
Laurent
started primary school at four, completed the year and then completed the next
five years of study in just 12 months.
He was six
when he went to high school and a year later, to fight off boredom at school,
was allowed to start a research project at the Academic Medical Centre in
Amsterdam.
Despite his
voracious appetite for learning, it wasn’t always easy. Laurent’s loves are
maths and science but at high school he was forced to trudge through long
novels dealing with romance.
“The high
school novels were not about the things he was interested in,” said Alexander,
“but he liked Shakespeare. There is a bit of action and not too much romance
and he liked it because there are movies about it.”
“When he is
on his own he likes to watch Netflix,” Alexander said, “and when his friends
come round to play they all sit around playing games on their mobile phones in
silence like any other kids”.
Laurent
loves his two German shepherds, Joe and Sam, and is a keen go-karter. He likes
Formula one racing and is a fan of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.
Lydia, his
mother, added, “He is just as stubborn as any other nine-year-old when dinner
is not to his liking. And that's a lot!"
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