What ever happens to these kids? I read these articles once every few years, and then .. Does the beurocracy of academia swallow them whole or is their work no longer interesting once they hit 18? Or do they become average academics?
Even if the rest had very interesting research, you wouldn't hear about them outside of their chosen field unless they reached superstar status.
"After graduating from Ayer High School in 1906 at 11 years of age, Wiener entered Tufts College. He was awarded a BA in mathematics in 1909 at the age of 14, whereupon he began graduate studies of zoology at Harvard. In 1910 he transferred to Cornell to study philosophy. He graduated in 1911 at 17 years of age."
There are also, of course, many, many more musical and chess prodigies, for example... Mozart probably being the most famous of them all.
Curiously, there don't seem to be any significant prodigy novelists or poets.
"Ruth Elke Lawrence-Neimark (Hebrew: רות אלקה לורנס-נאימרק, born 2 August 1971) is a British–Israeli mathematician and an associate professor of mathematics at the Einstein Institute of Mathematics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a researcher in knot theory and algebraic topology."
"In 1981 Lawrence passed the Oxford University entrance examination in mathematics, joining St Hugh's College in 1983 at the age of twelve."
Discovered group theory and died in a duel at 20. His work is very important to modern cryptography.