Uni’s youngest PhD grad is a homeschooler
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschooling Achievers on 11 Mar 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 Ph
D 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 played 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!
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