Super Humans - William Cullen Bryant

William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts; the home of his birth is today marked with a plaque. He was the second son of Peter Bryant (b. Aug. 12, 1767, d. Mar. 20, 1820), a doctor and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell (b. Dec. 4, 1768, d. May 6, 1847). The genealogies of both of his parents trace back to passengers on the Mayflower; his mother's to John Alden (b. 1599, d. 1687); his father's to Francis Cooke (b. 1577, d. 1663). He was also a nephew of Charity Bryant, a Vermont seamstress who is the subject of Rachel Hope Cleves' 2014 book Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America. Bryant and his family moved to a new home when he was two years old. The William Cullen Bryant Homestead, his boyhood home, is now a museum. After just one year at Williams College (he entered with sophomore standing), he hoped to transfer to Yale, but a talk with his father led to the realization that family finances would not support it. His father counseled a legal career as his best available choice, and the disappointed poet began to study law in Worthington and Bridgewater in Massachusetts. He was admitted to the bar in 1815 and began practicing law in nearby Plainfield, walking the seven miles from Cummington every day. On one of these walks, in December 1815, he noticed a single bird flying on the horizon; the sight moved him enough to write "To a Waterfowl". Bryant developed an interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. "The Embargo", a savage attack on President Thomas Jefferson published in 1808, reflected Dr. Bryant's Federalist political views. The first edition quickly sold out — partly because of publicity attached to the poet's young age. A second, expanded edition included Bryant's translation of classical verse. During his collegiate studies and his reading for the law, he wrote little poetry, but encounters with the Graveyard Poets and then Wordsworth regenerated his passion for "the witchery of song." In his last decade, Bryant shifted from writing his own poetry to a blank verse translation of Homer's works. He assiduously worked on the Iliad and The Odyssey from 1871 to 1874. He is also remembered as one of the principal authorities on homeopathy and as a hymnist for the Unitarian Church — both legacies of his father's enormous influence on him.

Super Humans - Sho Timothy Yano

Sho Timothy Yano (矢野 祥 Yano Shō, born 1990, Portland, Oregon) is an American physician. Yano is a former child prodigy and has an estimated IQ of 200. Yano's father, Katsura, is originally from Japan and his mother, Kyung, is originally from South Korea. Yano reportedly was reading by age two, writing by age three, playing classical music on the piano at age four, and composing by age five. He went to the Mirman School as a child. After scoring 1500 out of 1600 on the SAT at age eight, he graduated from the American School of Correspondence at age nine then entered Loyola University Chicago also at age nine, graduating summa cum laude at age 12. He then entered the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago in the MSTP (Medical Scientist Training Program), which is designed for those seeking to earn an MD and PhD. He was awarded a PhD in molecular genetics and cell biology there in 2009, at the age of 18. He entered his second year of medical school at the University of Chicago in 2009, becoming at age 21 the youngest person to graduate with an MD from the University of Chicago, for which he has been called a "real-life Doogie Howser". He is currently a pediatric neurology resident at the University of Chicago.

According to Yano, he owes much of his success to his mother, who noticed his superior intellectual capabilities at an early age and helped encourage and motivate him through rigorous academic enrichment. His mother also homeschooled him through the 12th grade, saying she felt other students his age wouldn't be as interested in their studies. Sho's younger sister Sayuri (born 1996) also exhibits prodigious talents in both academic studies and music; she is, as of 2010, a graduate at Roosevelt University with a Bachelor of Science in biology degree. She is currently a B.M. student majoring in violin performance at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.

Super Humans - Avicenna

"Avicenna" is the Latinate form of Ibn Sīnā. For the mountain peak known by this name, see Ibn Sīnā Peak. Avicenna (/ˌævᵻˈsɛnə/; Latinized form of Ibn-Sīnā, Arabic full name Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sīnā[4] أبو علي الحسين ابن عبد الله ابن سينا; c. 980 – June 1037) was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing. a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine – a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650. In 1973, Avicenna's Canon Of Medicine was reprinted in New York. Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics and poetry.

Avicenna was born c. 980 in Afšana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Setareh, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullah, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan, although this is not universally agreed upon. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them. A number of theories have been proposed regarding Avicenna's madhab (school of thought within Islamic jurisprudence). Medieval historian Ẓahīr al-dīn al-Bayhaqī (d. 1169) considered Avicenna to be a follower of the Brethren of Purity. On the other hand, Dimitri Gutas along with Aisha Khan and Jules J. Janssens demonstrated that Avicenna was a Sunni Hanafi.  However, the 14th cenutry Shia faqih Nurullah Shushtari according to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, maintained that he was most likely a Twelver Shia. Conversely, Sharaf Khorasani, citing a rejection of an invitation of the Sunni Governor Sultan Mahmoud Ghazanavi by Avicenna to his court, believes that Avicenna was an Ismaili. Similar disagreements exist on the background of Avicenna's family, whereas some writers considered them Sunni, some more recent writers contested that they were Shia. According to his autobiography, Avicenna had memorised the entire Quran by the age of 10. He learned Indian arithmetic from an Indian greengrocer, Mahmoud Massahi and he began to learn more from a wandering scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and teaching the young. He also studied Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) under the Sunni Hanafi scholar Ismail al-Zahid. Avicenna taught some extent of philosophy books such as Introduction (Isagoge)'s Porphyry (philosopher), Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's Almagest by an unpopular philosopher, Abu Abdullah Nateli, who claimed philosophizing. As a teenager, he was greatly troubled by the Metaphysics of Aristotle, which he could not understand until he read al-Farabi's commentary on the work. For the next year and a half, he studied philosophy, in which he encountered greater obstacles. In such moments of baffled inquiry, he would leave his books, perform the requisite ablutions, then go to the mosque, and continue in prayer till light broke on his difficulties. Deep into the night, he would continue his studies, and even in his dreams problems would pursue him and work out their solution. Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination, from the little commentary by Farabi, which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhams. So great was his joy at the discovery, made with the help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed alms upon the poor. He turned to medicine at 16, and not only learned medical theory, but also by gratuitous attendance of the sick had, according to his own account, discovered new methods of treatment. The teenager achieved full status as a qualified physician at age 18, and found that "Medicine is no hard and thorny science, like mathematics and metaphysics, so I soon made great progress; I became an excellent doctor and began to treat patients, using approved remedies." The youthful physician's fame spread quickly, and he treated many patients without asking for payment. He was a truly Renaissance man and polymath, the Leonardo da Vinci equivalent in the Arabic world.

Super Humans - Balamurali Ambati

   Balamurali Ambati is an Indian-American ophthalmologist, educator, and researcher, currently working at the University of Utah. In 1995, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records[citation needed] as the world's youngest doctor, at the age of seventeen. According to his parents, Ambati was doing calculus at the age of 4. At age 11, he graduated from Baltimore City College and co-authored a research book on AIDS. He graduated from New York University at the age of 13, with Rami Malek a distant second at the age of 20. He graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine with distinction at the age of 17, scoring above 99 percent on his National Medical Boards and becoming the world's youngest doctor in 1995. Ambati expressed that he disliked being compared to Doogie Howser, the fictional teenage doctor. Ambati described himself as being popular with people and, standing 6 feet tall, did not appear too young for a career in medicine, when he entered medical school at 14 years old, some assumed that he was one of the regular medical students. He completed an ophthalmology residency at Harvard University, where he developed strategies to reverse corneal angiogenesis, after becoming a winner at the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and the International Science & Engineering Fair and becoming a National Merit Scholar. He received the prestigious Raja-Lakshmi Award in the year 1995 from Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation, Chennai. After completing a fellowship in cornea and refractive surgery at Duke University in 2002, he joined the faculty of the Medical College of Georgia, where he practiced clinical ophthalmology and conducted research in such areas as corneal angiogenesis and outcomes of corneal and refractive surgery. He also volunteers with the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital, traveling to under-privileged countries to practice and teach ophthalmic surgery. Currently, Dr. Ambati is a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, adjunct associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy, and director of corneal research at the University of Utah School of Medicine. His father, Dr. Rao Ambati, convinced school administrators to allow his son to study at his own pace — nearly twice as fast as his peers. Dr. Rao Ambati says that he taught Balamurali and his brother to be focused and to desire accomplishment. Balamurali wrote a book on AIDS at age 11 with his brother, who is also a doctor now. His mother is a Tamil linguist and mathematician. 

    He completed his MD on May 19, 1995 at age 17 years, 294 days.

   He won the Ludwig von Sallmann Clinician-Scientist Award from the ARVO Foundation in 2014 and the Troutman-Véronneau Prize from the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology in 2013.  He was also awarded the Fourth IRDS Awards for Medicine for his achievements, awarded by the Lucknow based Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (IRDS).