Submission + - TED lecturer Taylor Wilson at 21 - having created fusion at 14 (theguardian.com)
Bruce66423 writes: "For his fifth birthday, he demanded a crane – a real one. So Kenneth called a friend who owned a construction company and on the day of the party a six-tonne crane duly arrived, the operator letting Wilson sit in his lap and work the controls."
For his 10th birthday his grandmother bought him The Radioactive Boy Scout, a book about a teenager in Michigan called David Hahn, who tried to build a nuclear breeder reactor in a back-yard shed in 1994. His experiment ended badly: arrest, disgrace and cleanup workers in hazmat suits. Naturally, Wilson saw the story as a challenge rather than a cautionary tale. His grandmother lived to regret the gift.
"On one occasion when Tiffany poked her head into the garage and saw her son, in his canary yellow nuclear technician’s coveralls, watching a pool of liquid spreading across the concrete floor.
“Tay, it’s time for supper.”
“I think I’m going to have to clean this up first.”
“That’s not the stuff you said would kill us if it broke open, is it?”
“I don’t think so. Not instantly.”
For his 10th birthday his grandmother bought him The Radioactive Boy Scout, a book about a teenager in Michigan called David Hahn, who tried to build a nuclear breeder reactor in a back-yard shed in 1994. His experiment ended badly: arrest, disgrace and cleanup workers in hazmat suits. Naturally, Wilson saw the story as a challenge rather than a cautionary tale. His grandmother lived to regret the gift.
"On one occasion when Tiffany poked her head into the garage and saw her son, in his canary yellow nuclear technician’s coveralls, watching a pool of liquid spreading across the concrete floor.
“Tay, it’s time for supper.”
“I think I’m going to have to clean this up first.”
“That’s not the stuff you said would kill us if it broke open, is it?”
“I don’t think so. Not instantly.”
