March 11, 2006

• Melbourne University's youngest-ever PhD graduate is a homeschooler

  Achievers
  who are homeschoolers are not unusual and scores make the headlines
  every year. But when Melbourne Uni reported that its youngest ever PHD
  grad was a homeschooler who was born in Malaysia ( his family lived in
  New Zealand since he was three and later in Australia when he was 16),
  lots of people here sat up and took notice.

  WHEN he was 10, while his peers swung
  from monkey bars and charged around with rugby balls, Yao-ban Chan sat year 12
  exams in statistics and calculus. He scored 91 and 90.

  It is such a mind-boggling
  accomplishment that it almost makes his latest achievement seem commonplace.

  At 21, today he becomes the
  youngest-ever PhD graduate at Melbourne
  University.

  "I always liked maths, I always
  found it fun," Mr Chan said with trademark understatement from his office
  in the university's mathematics department yesterday. Mr Chan, who was born in Malaysia
  and raised in New Zealand,
  was largely home-schooled by his mother Peck-Woon, a microbiologist, and father
  George, a director with Heinz.

  (Read the rest here)
  

  According to the 2001 Newsletter of the New Zealand Mathematical Society,
  Yao-ban was also an accomplished pianist who
  studied piano performance (passed LTCL last year) and was a regular
  accompanist
  and singer with his church choir. At home, he palyed computer
  games and table tennis. He also read extensively and wrote fantasy
  stories and had s put up two origami exhibitions and conducted a
  demonstration class.

  Way to go Yao-ban!

  • 10:56 am
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