Smarty-Pants

Is this the smartest person in the world?. The youngest college professor ever: a 19-year-old Muslim Iranian-American woman, Alia Sabur. Taught herself to read at the age of 8 *months*. High-school grad at 10, college grad at 14. Now going to Konkuk University, S.Korea, to work in materials science (nanotubes). Also a concert-level clarinetist who has studied at Julliard.

Meanwhile, it turns out that boys aren't necessarily better at math, when you start to compare test results in different countries:

In countries where women occupy an equal position to men in society, such as Sweden, there was virtually no gender gap in maths ability. However, in countries with lower levels of gender equality, such as Turkey, the boys performed better in maths tests than the girls.

"The gender gap in mathematics doesn't seem to be a feature of every society," says Sapienza.

What's more, the girls produced better reading scores than the boys in all the countries looked at, but did even better in countries with higher levels of gender equality.