BR Special! The most brilliant Romanian children of now and yesterday

According to estimations, there are at least 50,000 Romanian children with above-average intelligence (some say the number could be as high as 200,000). Some of these children show their brilliance through creativity in arts, others come up with solutions to the world’s biggest problems through the use of technology.

Below are some of Romania’s child prodigies. Some of them have grown up, but they achieved incredible things from very young ages:

Dorian Istrate: he is among the most intelligent children in the world, a member of Mensa, and had an IQ over 140 at 12 years old (children usually have IQs between 100-110). Both his brother  and his father are Mensa members as well.

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Matei Bucur Mihaescu, now a young adult, was the youngest conductor in Romania. He started composing music at 7 years old and at 13 he set up his very own orchestra.

Andrei Morar from Fagaras was incredibly bored by the things he had to learn in school, so he started reading university-level books and studies since he was 9 years old. Back then, he already knew the things he didn’t like: bad, non-educational movies, boxing, deforestation, illegal constructions, destruction of monuments and natural habitats, and… lazy people.

Matei Caravateanu from Cluj created a complex video game that won an award at a large international competition in Ireland at only nine years old. He loves science fiction and reading books by Isaac Asimov and Joseph Delaney. His game is called “The Lost World” and it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, with a robot as the main character.

Prodigies from Romania’s history

Iulia Hasdeu – the daughter of scientist and writer Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Iulia was born in 1869 and was seen as the genius child of Romanian culture. At two years old she was already speaking French, started writing nuvellas at five and poems at seven.

At 11, Iulia Hasdeu started to write plays in Romanian and French, both comedies and tragedies. At only 16, she became the first Romanian to attend the Sorbonne University, studying Philosophy.

George Enescu – born in 1881 in a village in Botosani county, he had a spectacular talent for music from as young as four years old. He had his first violin

concert at five and was able to improvise and compose new works on the spot. He studied at the Vienna Music School between the ages of 7 and 13 and became well-known on the musical scene of the Austrian capital. Later, he goes to the Paris Music School and at 16 he debuts as a composer in Paris.