The word prodigy is used for young people who have exceptional or outstanding abilities. This is the more commonly adopted definition for the term, but if you look at it more technically, being a prodigy is no mean feat. A child prodigy is someone who has expert proficiency or a profound grasp of a field which is usually only undertaken by adults. It’s only when a child shows such mastery of a field by the age of 11 years that they are considered to be a prodigy.
But identifying a prodigy takes more effort than you may know. Firstly, exceptional talent or proficiency is not that easily identified in most subjects. Mathematics and languages are two fields that are relatively easy to identify prodigies in—which is also why most well-known prodigies have a base in math, language or related fields. What’s more, there aren’t that many girl child prodigies who have been identified over the course of history as compared to men. This could be owing to limited access to not just education and skills training, but also to systems where their talents are recognised.
Despite these barriers, there are a number of girls who have been acknowledged globally as prodigies. Here’s a closer look at seven such exceptional girls in history who proved that their brilliance cannot be limited by their age or gender.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
Born Juana Ramirez de Asbaje in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (present-day Mexico) in either 1648 or 1651, this girl child had learned how to read by the age of three. She was such a voracious reader that she allegedly mastered Latin in just 20 lessons! Juana wrote her first dramatic poem at age eight, and word of her intellect spread. When she was about 16, the New Spain viceroy arranged around 40 professors who quizzed her on her knowledge. So astonished were the experts by her intellect that Juana is now known as one of the earliest women prodigies of the world, and one of the most important writers of the Baroque period of Mexican literature.
Judit Polgar
Laszlo Polgar, a psychologist, was convinced that children can be exceptionally talented in properly trained—and he proved this through his three daughters! Raised in an environment where chess was a constant, all three girls grew up to be chess prodigies, but it was Judit who was most recognised. In December 1991, she became the youngest player ever to earn the rank of grandmaster, breaking the record held by Bobby Fischer since 1958. She was only 15 at the time. Instead of playing with women only, Judit focused her career on playing with the best male players in the world. In 2005, she was ranked eighth among the top chess players in the world, becoming the only woman to ever enter the top 10.
Clara Schumann
Born in Germany around 1820, Clara Schumann mastered the piano by the age of seven, and was composing her own pieces at 10. At the age of 11, she made her first concert debut. In 1831, she started her first tour of Europe, where she earned acclaim from the likes of Chopin. Even after her wedding in 1840, Schumann continued to write music and perform. By the time of her death in 1896, Schumann had played at more than 1,300 concerts and spent six decades as a professional musician.
Maria Agnesi
Born into a wealthy Milanese family in 1718, Agnesi could speak Italian and French by the time she was five years old. By the time she was 11, she had also mastered Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, and Latin—which is why she was often referred to as the Seven-Tongued Orator. But languages are not the only things this prodigy knew, as she was also a mathematician by the time she turned 14. Agnesi is now known as the first woman to ever write a math textbook, and the first woman in the world to be appointed as a mathematics professor at a university, due to her appointment by the University of Bologna.
Shakuntala Devi
Popularly known as ‘the human computer’, this Indian child prodigy was completely self-taught—which only added to her mystique and fame. Born in 1929 to a father who was a circus performer, Devi travelled from place to place, exhibiting her incredible prowess over mathematics. In 1980, she earned her place in the Guinness Book of World Records after demonstrating her extraordinary abilities at the Imperial College, London. Her legacy has been to demystify the world of numbers for students of math, and she’s also credited for writing the first book on Indian homosexuality.
Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr.
Born to Winifred Sackville Stoner, the founder of the Natural Education movement, in 1902, Stoner Jr was able to read and write by the time she was three. By six, she not only knew how to use a typewriter, but had also published a book of poems. Continuing in this route, she had mastered five languages by the time she was eight, and had passed the entrance exams for both Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison by the age of nine.
Anne-Marie Imafidon
Born in 1990, Imafidon and her siblings were all recognised as child prodigies. She had passed two A level exams in maths by the time she was 11, and by the time she was 13, she had won a British scholarship to study maths at Johns Hopkins University. She was also admitted to the University of Oxford in 2005, when she was only 15. At 19, she became the youngest ever person to graduate with a master’s degree. Imafidon also speaks six languages, and founded Stemettes in 2013, to support women in STEM fields.