A Bachelor at 16

Don Zagier, a short (5 ft. 4 in.), amiable youth, graduated last week at 16. That may sound only mildly interesting and not at all rare until is it said that Don's diploma was not from high school but rather from M.I.T.--and that he picked up not one, but two bachelor of science degrees.

Don, whose mother is a psychiatrist and whose father is dean of instruction at The American College of Switzerland, is not the customary introverted boy genius. He enjoys skiing and bridge, makes friends easily, dates a 20-year-old coed. Like most students, he prefers eleventh-hour cramming to term-long study. But he is bright, fast, hates to go to bed before five in the morning, and is in a very big hurry to succeed academically.

How did Don do it? I.Q. tests put him high in the genius category, but his grades were mediocre until his interest was aroused. He was so bored by his fifth-grade schoolwork in Stockton, Calif., where his father then taught at the University of the Pacific, that concerned school officials gave him a battery of psychological tests, then decided to let him skip the sixth grade. His marks climbed, and he was jumped past the ninth and eleventh grades. He went to summer school, took eight semesters of Berkeley math and humanities courses by mail, graduated from high school at 13.

Don was accepted by M.I.T. after scoring a perfect 800 in English and advanced-math achievement tests; instead of beginning that September, he decided to take a year's preparation at England's exclusive Winchester College. He spent his spare time studying M.I.T. textbooks, then took tests in virtually all of the university's freshman courses (including calculus, physics and chemistry), and passed them all. That permitted him to substitute more advanced courses in his first year at M.I.T.

In his third semester, he stepped up the pace, took twelve courses instead of the usual four. By maintaining high course loads, he not only earned the required 360 credits for his math degree in just two years, but an extra 90 for a physics degree as well. And he did so without scheduling any classes before 11 a.m., so he could sleep late. Don will enter graduate study next fall at Oxford under Theoretical Mathematician Michael F. Atiyah. When math is really understood, Don says, "it becomes art, and you realize that you are seeing beauty."

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