At
9 years old, William Maillis is like a lot of other boys his age,
enjoying video games, knock-knock jokes, sports and hanging out with
friends. But William is no ordinary kid when it comes to academics.
In
May, he graduated from high school and is now a college student already
working on his own theories of how the universe was created.
Most other 9-year-olds are in fourth grade.
William, who lives in Penn Township, Pennsylvania, is among the youngest people ever to attend college.
He's
currently taking a full slate of classes at Community College of
Allegheny County as a way to ease into life as a college student and
plans to enroll next fall at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
according to his father, Peter Maillis, a Greek Orthodox priest.
"It doesn't bother me" being the youngest student in class by far, William tells PEOPLE. "I'm used to it by now."
William,
who wants to study the physics and chemistry of space, earn a doctorate
degree and work as an astrophysicist, is at ease tossing around
concepts like "displacement of space-time" "singularity" and "pure
gravity" as he patiently attempts to explain why black holes aren't "super massive" as theorized by such other brilliant minds as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Bottom
line, according to William: "I want to prove to everybody that God does
exist," he says, by showing that only an outside force could be capable
of forming the cosmos.
Maillis said he and his wife, Nancy, who
also are parents to a daughter, 29, and son, 26, – "[William] was our
17-year-surprise," Maillis says with a laugh – realized their young son
was advanced when he started accurately identifying numbers at 6 months
old and speaking in complete sentences at just 7 months old, he said.
"William was just very sharp," Maillis says. "William remembers everything he sees."
He followed with a range of impressive academic feats,
including doing addition at 21 months; multiplication, reading and
writing at 2 years old; algebra, sign language and reading Greek at age
4; geometry at 5 and trigonometry at 7.
After
finishing third grade last year, William then simultaneously attended
fourth grade and high school while also taking some college classes and
this year enrolled in college full-time, his dad says.
Despite
his obvious prowess, William was originally turned down when he tried to
enroll in kindergarten at age 4 after failing an entrance readiness
test when he couldn't, for example, identify gray as a color ("gray is a
shade, not a color," his father explains) or recognize a thermometer
("we don't use that kind, we use the kind that goes in your ear," he
says).
Maillis then consulted with a college psychologist who studies whiz kids
and she declared him a "pure genius" after administering IQ tests, he
says. The elementary school reconsidered and allowed him in.
Maillis
says he and his wife allow William to take the lead in deciding what
areas of interest to pursue. "Whatever classes he wants to take, that's
okay with me," Maillis says. "I don't want to push him."
William's
history professor, Aaron Hoffman, says the boy fits right in with his
other college students. "We haven't steered away from any topics:
Hitler, Mussolini, the Holocaust, wars," Hoffman says. "If he's here for
college, he's going to get college-level material."
The only
difference he's noticed, Hoffman says, is that William doesn't take
notes like the other students, but simply listens, reads and absorbs the
material.
Through it all, Maillis says his son remains
grounded. "I just want him to appreciate the gift he has, which I think
he does," Maillis said. "I tell him, 'God gave you a gift. The worst
thing would be to reject that gift and not use it for the betterment of
the world.' "
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