crystal.pina

Here is something I received from another list. I though it was interesting enough to share with everyone here. I cut and pasted everything below this line from the other list.

Crystal

MIT had a story highlighting their latest "MacArthur genius award winner," who happens to be the youngest of this year's crop of MacArthurs--and he's a 22-year-old MIT asst. professor who homeschooled in a very unorthodox way which led to pathbreaking research in a field called "computation origami." So cool, so beautiful...and lots of potential practical applications too (including molecular geometry.)

Here's the latest story about the MacArthur grant:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2003/macarthur.html

and, for background, here's more details about his unorthodox and fascinating homeschooling background:

http://tinyurl.com/q0bh
I really liked this second article, originally in the Boston Globe.

Quotes:
"Raised among hippies and jugglers and free thinkers, Erik Demaine has found himself at the center of a field where abstract math somehow intersects with street performance. That he is a prodigy is not even a question, say people who have worked with him; the question is what will amuse him. "

''We would go to a museum,'' Demaine said. ''Anything he pointed to or mentioned, I'd go to the library and find a book and leave it on the table. Sometimes after three days the books would disappear.''


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In a message dated 10/7/03 5:19:58 PM, crystal.pina@... writes:

<< ''We would go to a museum,'' Demaine said. ''Anything he pointed to or
mentioned, I'd go to the library and find a book and leave it on the table.
Sometimes after three days the books would disappear.''
>>

Strewing! <g>