The Nuclear Scientist Who Skipped College | Hacker News Reader

The Nuclear Scientist Who Skipped College

theatlantic.com

96 pointssasvari50 comments

I'd like to see a tad less credulity in tales like this. Certainly, innovations in engineering are quite workable by an amateur enthusiast, particularly in niche areas with significant commercial interest like medical isotope manufacturing.

But hard fusion is an area that's been looked at for decades by literally thousands of top physicists around the world, and there's little low-hanging fruit left for a tabletop inventor to come across. Multi-billion dollar efforts like the National Ignition Facility involving hundreds or thousands of scientists are where the action's at today, and they've brought together solid plans for pursuing economically sustainable fusion.

An outsider may indeed bring new ideas that have value in niche areas, simply because that's not where the majority of scientific attention is being focused -- but it's unlikely to be a replacement for the core effort of an entire movement, as the article suggests.

Sadly, while reading it my inner (outer?) cynic thought, "another phenom I'll be reading about on the 30-years-from-now version of cracked.com, about "Young Phenoms Who Became Merely Very Good".

And after seeing all of the African urine generator stories that didn't have even the slightest amount of scientific rigor to them, that didn't help.

But that said, one could argue that if thousands of people with traditional backgrounds all attacked the same problem and couldn't crack it, if it's ever going to be cracked it might require someone who comes from a completely different system.

Actually, I'd love to know of any cases where an outsider with a nontraditional background like this was able to solve a famous unsolved problem that had withstood significant academic and economic scrutiny. Is this a collective myth, or does it ever actually happen?

The only example that comes to mind was Ramanujan, who made many new contributions in number theory, but it's not quite the same thing -- though his genius was unparalleled, he was also working on domains that were at the time not as widely studied as nuclear fusion is today.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin.

Einstein, of course.

The cotton gin?!

Einstein: physics-trained, in Switzerland, married a physics classmate, learned electromagnetism from his father and uncle who were in the power generation business, taught physics, worked in the patent office, certainly a good place to be exposed to the froth of new ideas. Read the Isaacson biography.

The cotton gin was a simple device that solved a long-standing problem that nobody else thought of. It came out of nowhere.

Einstein, in 1905's "miracle year", was pretty much outside of the physics establishment (why he worked in the patent office).

He was soaked in advanced calculus from puberty. Not quite the same as skipping college.

Galois, Fermat, Tartaglia...

Setting aside the question of whether these mathematicians were outsiders, they were certainly not working on problems as well-studied as nuclear fusion is today.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_equation#History

Cubic equations were researched by mathematicians for thousands of years before Tartaglia solved the general case! (btw the solution for Quadratic equations was well known since at least 2000 BC)

And he also made up the complex numbers on the way!

Wrt whether he was an outsider, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Fontana_Tartaglia

> There is a story that Tartaglia learned only half the alphabet from a private tutor before funds ran out, and he had to learn the rest for himself. Be that as it may, he was essentially self-taught. He and his contemporaries, working outside the academies, were responsible for the spread of classic works in modern languages among the educated middle class.

After Tartaglia's solution for Cubic equations and Ferrari's solution for Quartic equations were published in 1545, no doubt that finding a solution for 5th degree polynomials became a hot topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintic_function

> Finding the roots of a given polynomial has been a prominent mathematical problem.

But even though it was a hot topic, it took 300 years until Galois came around with a method to determine which Quintic equations can and which cannot be factored to "radicals".

Overall amateurs spend a lot of time and money and contribute next to nothing to scientific progress. Astronomy is known for the contributions from armatures, but if you actually look at all known objects in space they have contributed a ridiculously small fraction of them and have been limited to rather bright objects.

I fear the media focuses so much on the armatures contributions that most people have a rather distorted view of the value of large and well funded projects like ITER.

Outsider ≠ amateur.

Amateur astronomers may only contribute a little on an individual basis (it is not their primary job, after all), but collectively, they contribute massively in some sub-disciplines. Two fairly prominent examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Association_of_Variabl...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_zoo

As a side note, astronomy is not simply about discovering objects. Furthermore, many amateurs have access to pretty impressive hardware; they are not as limited as you might think.

He gave a ted talk and it seems credible.

http://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_yup_i_built_a_nuclear...

the main thing that lacks credibility is the title... i read that he did attend college classes as a child. also, the fusion experiment is also currently housed at a university.

I, for one, am interested in his creating a fusion reactor at 14. I suppose from a regulatory perspective it's easier than fission, because the materials are safer and there's no risk of a runaway reaction (we wish). But while I've heard accounts of fission in garages and such, I'd never heard of anyone doing fusion. Ostensibly because of the exotic materials and energy required.

This piece is pretty fluffy, does anyone have something more technical about his first reactor design?

Very vague indeed. Back when I was in college (the 80s) at least one of our physics professors had a home brew particle accelerator -- which will let you do fusion very inefficiently.

I suspect we are talking about some device that can do fusion very inefficiently and can measure the energy output relative to input rather than in any way being a stepping stone to a workable design (e.g. a spark generator probably qualifies).

Probabably a fusor, according to the Wikiepedia article "Fusors have been assembled in low-power forms by hobbyists."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

Apparently correct. As noted by direction from

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/01/living/teen-nuclear-scientist/...

http://www.fusor.net/

One of my coworkers has achieved fusion in his "garage" (rented warehouse space in Brooklyn, to be exact). He's now working on a polywell reactor, and blogs about it frequently:

http://prometheusfusionperfection.com

His website: http://sciradioactive.com/Taylors_Nuke_Site/Welcome.html

As speculated, he did indeed build a fusor: http://sciradioactive.com/Taylors_Nuke_Site/Neutron_Sources....

Thick on rebellion against the system, thin on science.

Auto-didactic nuclear physicist? OK, not entirely impossible, but pardon my skepticism, I need more details. Did any of his inventions went in production? What kind of fusion reaction we're talking about?

Fusion at 14 was just a hobby. Cheap sensitive detector and isotope production method are innovative achievements.

If these achievements are anything like the ones that get hyped at things like the Intel science fair, there's probably a lot more mainstream science than is getting credit.

Behind nearly every 14-year-old "genius" stands a supportive expert who made the work possible, but doesn't get the press. The media is credulous when it comes to stories of youthful precocity.

I think he should still knock out a quick PhD in physics or similar, especially from a top notch school. There's got to be -something- he can learn being around and cooperating with really smart people. Or as his mom says, "You've got to have something to fall back on..."

Even if he gets accepted directly into a graduate program (I think this is very rare but he may qualify), the first couple years are not going to be dedicated to research. I agree that there would be a lot of value there for someone so young - what's the rush? - but I've never heard of a quick PhD.

Wittgenstein received a PhD from Cambridge solely from his book Tractatus, which he wrote during WWI.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#section_6

Well thanks to you I just spent the last hour reading about Wittgenstein...

1929–1941: Fellowship at Cambridge PhD and fellowship

At the urging of Ramsey and others, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929. Keynes wrote in a letter to his wife: "Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train."[123] Despite this fame, he could not initially work at Cambridge as he did not have a degree, so he applied as an advanced undergraduate. Russell noted that his previous residency was sufficient for a PhD, and urged him to offer the Tractatus as his thesis. It was examined in 1929 by Russell and Moore; at the end of the thesis defence, Wittgenstein clapped the two examiners on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it."[124] Moore wrote in the examiner's report: "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree."[125]

-- The story in a nutshell.

"the first couple years are not going to be dedicated to research"

Depends on the country - in the UK you can/could go straight from completing an undergraduate degree to working full time in research doing a PhD without having to attend any more classes.

btw he did get accepted to MIT undergrad and chose to defer. I know from a common friend.

He is both smart and has a good work ethic, so I wouldn't prescribe anything to him. He should work on what he wants to work on and the opportunities for collaboration will present themselves.

Very cool he's going off to do such things. I only hope he'll meet the right people that allow him to achieve even more, people that he would have met at, say, MIT.

Being a wunderkind has probably afforded him more opportunities for networking than the average postdoc. He may be resented over his age or education, but he's already differentiated himself, even outside his field. I feel like a lab he's associated with could do very well funding-wise.

The NIF reminds us that the line between optimism and overselling is a thin one that can too easily be crossed.

http://www.nature.com/news/ignition-switch-1.11748

Reminded me vaguely of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn The Radioactive Boy Scout..

My favorite anecdote from his Popular Science write up: “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,” he said. “Not instantly.”

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played...

"My other big development is a system to produce medical isotopes that are injected into patients and used to diagnose and treat cancer. It’s a design that costs less than $100,000 and wheels right into a hospital room—replacing multimillion-dollar, warehouse-size facilities."

I can see how a low price is attractive. But why bring the isotope source into a hospital room? Seems to be better placed in a warehouse...

These isotopes have limited (and sometimes quite short) lifetimes. Bringing them closer to the patients means that they can be produced in smaller quantities on an as needed basis, and reduces the necessary infrastructure to transport them.

Is it correct that this is the kind of stuff used for PET scans? I didn't read the article, but my radiology friend told me that they create semi-custom isotopes for PET scans.

PET (for oncology at least) typically uses 18-FDG, a glucose analog. Unfortunately has a short half life requiring facilities to be close to the source.

I'm surprised we haven't seen more mention of ITER in this thread

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER http://www.iter.org/

One of my professors from college moonlights as a consultant for the project.

What most people don't acknowledge about the "30 years away" joke is the type of environments in which the statement was made. In the 1950's the confidence was rooted in naivete (similar statements were made about making artificial life), but in the 1970's the confidence was rooted in economics. The fuel crises led to substantially increased funding in alternative energy sources.

Much lamented by my professor from college, as oil prices dropped back down so did research funding for fusion reactors (although given that the bulk of electricity in this country comes from coal, nuclear, natural gas, and to a lesser extent hydro I'm not clear why that would've been the case, maybe we were running more extensively on fuel oil back then).

If ITER proves promising (beyond energy break even) another facility will have to be constructed that will be more expensive and will take longer to construct, this facility will prove promising only if it indicates potential for economic break even (I think it has to put out >7x the input energy). If that can be accomplished then there's still a few material challenges (neutron bombardment has a tendency to make metals brittle, the appropriate containment chamber materials aren't even a glimmer in a material scientists eyes yet as well as the radioactivity issue (the entire plant will gradually become more radioactive).

If this kid built a fusor he clearly has a great deal of potential, while I'm skeptical that he can make a difference alone I wouldn't be surprised if he could offer contributions to the current projects underway to advance this field. Plasma magnetohydrodynamics has so few people that understand it that every additional mind has potential to make a difference.

Here is a brief Ted talk he gave, http://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_yup_i_built_a_nuclear...

FYI,

Taylor's self described "best nuclear friend" (1) is a fellow named Carl Willis who has an interesting, albeit infrequently updated, blog called "special nuclear material" here: http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/

(1) http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played...

I love the photo of his 'lab'. http://sciradioactive.com/Taylors_Nuke_Site/My_Lab.html --- it's amazing to see such a smart kid that is also a strong communicator.

Same thing struck me about his prose.

He's not only bright but incredibly articulate.

L. Ron?

Life imitates Art.. This is the real life Sheldon Cooper :)

"art"?

Sorry.. think im seen too much camelcase c++ classes these days :/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com