9-Year-Old Boy Graduates High School and Starts College, Wants to Become Astrophysicist: 'I Want to Prove That God Does Exist'
At 9 years old, William Maillis is like a lot of other boys his age, enjoying video games, knock-knock jokes, sports and hanging out with friends. But William is no ordinary kid when it comes to academics.
In May, he graduated from high school and is now a college student already
working on his own theories of how the universe was created. Most other
9-year-olds are in fourth grade. William, who lives in Penn Township,
Pennsylvania, is among the youngest people ever to attend college.
He's currently taking a full slate of classes at Community College of Allegheny
County as a way to ease into life as a college student and plans to enroll next
fall at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, according to his father, Peter
Maillis, a Greek Orthodox priest. "It doesn't bother me" being the youngest
student in class by far, William tells PEOPLE. "I'm used to it by now." William,
who wants to study the physics and chemistry of space, earn a doctorate degree
and work as an astrophysicist, is at ease tossing around concepts like
"displacement of space-time" "singularity" and "pure gravity" as he patiently
attempts to explain why black holes aren't "super massive" as theorized by such
other brilliant minds as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Bottom line, according to William: "I want to prove to everybody that God does
exist," he says, by showing that only an outside force could be capable of
forming the cosmos.Maillis said he and his wife, Nancy, who also are parents to
a daughter, 29, and son, 26, – "[William] was our 17-year-surprise," Maillis
says with a laugh – realized their young son was advanced when he started
accurately identifying numbers at 6 months old and speaking in complete
sentences at just 7 months old, he said.
"William was just very sharp," Maillis says. "William remembers everything he
sees." He followed with a range of impressive academic feats, including doing
addition at 21 months; multiplication, reading and writing at 2 years old;
algebra, sign language and reading Greek at age 4; geometry at 5 and
trigonometry at 7.
After finishing third grade last year, William then simultaneously attended
fourth grade and high school while also taking some college classes and this
year enrolled in college full-time, his dad says. Despite his obvious prowess,
William was originally turned down when he tried to enroll in kindergarten at
age 4 after failing an entrance readiness test when he couldn't, for example,
identify gray as a color ("gray is a shade, not a color," his father explains)
or recognize a thermometer ("we don't use that kind, we use the kind that goes
in your ear," he says).
Maillis then consulted with a college psychologist who studies whiz kids and she
declared him a "pure genius" after administering IQ tests, he says. The
elementary school reconsidered and allowed him in.
Maillis says he and his wife allow William to take the lead in deciding what
areas of interest to pursue. "Whatever classes he wants to take, that's okay
with me," Maillis says. "I don't want to push him."