Eideard

When Jacob Barnett first learned about the Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics, he could hardly contain himself. For three straight days, his little brain buzzed with mathematical functions.

From within his 12-year-old, mildly autistic mind, there gradually flowed long strings of pluses, minuses, funky letters and upside-down triangles — a tapestry of complicated symbols that few can understand.

He grabbed his pencil and filled every sheet of paper before grabbing a marker and filling up a dry erase board that hangs in his bedroom. With a single-minded obsession, he kept on, eventually marking up every window in the home…

Entirely normal for Jacob, a child prodigy who used to crunch his cereal while calculating the volume of the cereal box in his head…

Elementary school couldn’t keep Jacob interested. And courses at IUPUI have only served to awaken a sleeping giant.

Just a few weeks shy of his 13th birthday, Jake, as he’s often called, is starting to move beyond the level of what his professors can teach.

In fact, his work is so strong and his ideas so original that he’s being courted by a top-notch East Coast research center. IUPUI is interested in him moving from the classroom into a funded researcher’s position.

“We have told him that after this semester . . . enough of the book work. You are here to do some science,” said IUPUI physics Professor John Ross, who vows to help find some grant funding to support Jake and his work…

This is not what Jake’s parents expected from a child whose first few years were spent in silence.

“Oh my gosh, when he was 2, my fear was that he would never be in our world at all,” said Kristine Barnett, 36, Jake’s mother.

“He would not talk to anyone. He would not even look at us.”

RTFA. A delight. Not just for the tale of young Jacob; but, how his parents adapted and learned, experimented with freeing his latent abilities – sometimes regardless of the directions suggested by professional help more inclined to find the right box to put him into.

Great family story from all sides. And a young person I look forward to seeing in a larger picture someday.

Thanks, Mr. Fusion

Russian maths genius Grigory Perelman, who declined a prestigious international award four years ago, is under new pressure to accept a prize.

A US institute wants to give him $1m (£700,000) for solving one of the world’s most complex mathematical problems, the Poincare Conjecture.

But it is unclear whether Dr [Grigory] Perelman, a virtual recluse, will pick it up.

A children’s charity in St Petersburg, where he lives, has urged him to take the money and give it to charity.

Dr Perelman, 43, has cut himself off from the outside world for the past four years, living with his elderly mother in a tiny flat said by neighbours to be infested with cockroaches.

In an open letter on its website, the Warm Home charity called on Dr Perelman to give the cash equivalent of the US Clay Mathematics Institute’s $1m Millennium Prize to Russian charities.

It suggested that the mathematician had already made an ethical point by turning down the Fields Medal, the world’s highest prize in mathematics, in 2006….

The mathematician is reported to have said “I have all I want” when contacted by a reporter this week about the Clay Millennium Prize.

Whether my opinion gives people the creeps I could care less: I completely understand his point of view, and believe that he should be left alone if that is his wish.

Daylife – AFP/Getty Images

Microsoft will deploy “Gurus” to stores to help customers interested in purchasing a new PC or learn more about Windows products…Microsoft reinvigorated marketing efforts also include customer-service representatives who will be sent to Best Buy, Circuit City and other brick and mortar retail stores.

The Redmond, Washington-based company plans to have 155 “Microsoft Gurus” deployed to retailers across the country throughout 2008 and will expand the program depending on its success at the end of the year.

Rather than pay each guru on commission, they’ll be graded according to the customer experience by customers, who will chat with the gurus and learn more about Microsoft products and the PC industry.

Apple has a similar service, dubbed the “Genius Bar,” located in many Apple retail stores, with Apple employees available to help customers with their Macs or iPods. Each Apple Genius Bar also helps offer on-site technical support for customers who purchased something and are having problems with it.

While consumers generally have offered compliments about the genius program at Apple – it varies from store-to-store, region-to-region.

Predicting how well Microsoft does with their next step of copying Apple’s marketing methods is worth a smile at best. Calling their shills “gurus” is a reasonable indicator of how out-of-touch Microsoft management can be.