Meet the Worlds Youngest Professor

Hi everybody, my name is Saborno Barry and I'll be your teacher for today. Let's begin. My name is Saborno Isaac Barry. I'm 12 years old. As far as I know, I'm the youngest professor that's ever taught at a university. I'm 11 and I got a scholarship here. Good NYU. Yeah. Congratulations to you. It was not in our level. He was beyond our level. Good afternoon students and welcome to my physics class. With enough determination and enough passion, anything is possible. I was born over in Queens at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, but for the entire time when I was growing up, I was in the Bronx. We were in a pretty small apartment. My dad had a job working as a security guard and my mom was still unemployed back then, which made things pretty hard. But still, my dad had a big love for mathematics. My first interesting memory is around when I was two years old. And that was when I started wondering, why do we use math to explain the natural world? My mom used to give me lessons in math and that was when the thoughts started occurring to me. Okay. One day I was teaching him like one plus one is two, very beginning of the teaching level. And then he said, mom, then n plus n is what? It's two n, right? And then n times n is what? So it is kind of challenging situation for me. So I asked him to teach, but my husband said, no, he's just trying to impress you. I said, no, he's totally different than other kids. I just realized that. So then my husband started teaching him. Atomic number is seven. How many protons in hydrogen? Okay. Very good. So write one. In general, my preschool and kindergarten education was very normal. And so was my first grade and second grade education. As soon as third grade hit, I felt like I was totally disconnected from my school. I found myself growing more and more bored of the mathematics that I was being taught. Something in me finally broke and I decided to just stop caring about school. By the time I finished third grade, I actually had a whopping 122 missing assignments. And that was when my parents noticed that and decided that they had to actually support me by moving me to a higher grade so that I could actually feel challenged. I've been teaching technically for a very long time, ever since the channel Barry Science Lab has started. P factorial over k factorial, p minus k factorial. And one day when I was seven years old, I was given an invitation by a university in India to give some lectures about math and physics. I'm sure that I will still be able to inspire you to fall in love with physics. In this class, I want two things from you. Everyone needs to ask me at least one question. Did you hear that? He just said, sir, you wrote the equation wrong. The equation is wrong. This is like a Comedy Central skit. I am feeling like I've come a very long way. Everyone has to start somewhere. We published those videos and that went viral. And eventually it started snowballing into me doing lectures almost two or three times a year at this point. Right now, I'd estimate that the number of lectures I've given was probably between 30 to 35 in person, but possibly over 3000 if you count online lectures. Infinity is very special. Why? Because at some point, as X approaches, at the beginning, I wasn't a very good teacher because I wasn't really teaching. I was more just reciting everything that I already knew. And I think, how was anyone in the room tolerating this without walking out? But eventually I started figuring out how was this taught to me in a way that I could understand? The rewards are mostly just total gratification. It feels like you've actually spread your knowledge to other people. And that's one of the most valuable feelings you can get. Nowadays, I like to focus more on actually learning math and science rather than teaching math and science. And that's why for the past six months, actually, I've been a student of New York University and mathematics. Let me see. Does this work? I think it does. Wow. It's unbelievable. Honestly, unbelievable. Yeah. I'm 11 and I got a scholarship here at NYU. Yeah. Congratulations to you. It was a huge accomplishment for me even to get accepted into university. I was nervous that due to being in only two years of high school, and not just that, the fact that I was, well, six years younger than every other applicant, it would make it very difficult for me to get accepted. Okay. Tell me how things are going at NYU. Yeah. Everything's going great. This semester, I... Working with a student like Siborno is thrilling because they have infectious energy. No matter how much you teach them, they want to know more. These kids are actually special needs kids. And I know people don't like to think of them like that. The typical attitude is they're smart. They'll figure it out eventually. They don't. They need as much attention as somebody who's struggling to keep up with a class because they disengage in the same way. I was very lucky to be born with two of the most supportive parents in the world. I would like to tell any parents watching this, speak to your kids. They have a lot more going on in their mind than you might realize. Very proud of you. Okay. Now let's do something else. Don't want him to become next, I understand. We want him to become next happiest person in the world. Yes. We always support their interest. Nothing else. We never push them to do anything. Whatever they enjoy, we just support them as a parent. We think that's our responsibility. I hope that nine or 10 year old kids who see my story don't take away the message that they're supposed to be teaching at nine or 10 years old. But I think that they should take away the message that with enough determination and enough passion for whatever subject you want to go into, anything is possible.