Thursday, April 24, 2008

19 year old woman becomes youngest college professor EVER

Wow. Wow. Wow.

19-year-old Alia Sabur from Northport, New York, has become the world's youngest college professor.

She started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old. She had elementary school finished at age 5.

She made the jump to college at age 10. And by age 14, Sabur was earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so.

Her education continued at Drexel University, where she earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.

She was hired in February to become a professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, Korea, three days before her nineteenth birthday. This effectively made her the youngest college professor in history, beating the previous record set by Colin Maclaurin back in 1717, who was nineteen at the time.

...Although she doesn’t start until next month, Sabur has taken up teaching math and physics courses at Southern University in New Orleans, which is still struggling from the devastation left in Hurricane Katrina’s wake in 2005.

“I really enjoy teaching,” said Sabur. “It’s something where you can make a difference. It’s not just what you can do, but you can enable a lot of other people to make their changes.”

How awesome! I was so excited to hear of this fantastic woman (she's the same age as me!) who seems to have great motivation.

Via Feministing.

6 comments:

Kate said...

Feminist of the week?

Amelia said...

if not the "feminist" of the week, certainly she should be the AWESOME WOMAN of the week. :)

(The Korean) Andrew said...

That is fantastic. And I feel mightily unaccomplished now! :-D

lindsay said...

Ditto on that... People like her make me feel like I'm not doing anything with my life.

Amelia said...

Now now. Let me sound like a motherly figure and say that we can all make contributions to the world in our own ways. :)

habladora said...

Awesome. I've heard the idiot's 'why are there no women geniuses' card played recently, and it is nice to have another female genius pop up in the news.

Is anyone publishing a list of women who've had amazing accomplishments recognized (I know there are far far more whose genius has been underused or forgotten)? It would be nice to have a woman genius link - for the troll we meet on the net or in real life.