Standing among the young science geniuses on the spot of the 2nd World Laureates Forum, Xu Yiheng is a Chongqing student of grade three in high school.
As a student of the Chongqing Professional Talents Plan, Xu Yiheng was recommended to participate in the WLA 2nd Annual Forum.
As one of the first students of Chongqing Professional Talents Plan, he was recommended to participate in the WLA 2nd Annual Forum. As soon as he learned the news, he began to prepare for the forum. During the self-study time at night, he searched online for the information of related scientists and absorbed the background information of the conference for his speech and questions.
On October 29, Xu came to the forum. The forum gathered 65 top-notch scientists, including 44 Nobel laureates and 21 winners of the Wolf Prize, the Lasker Awards, the Turing Award, MacArthur Fellows Program, and the Fields Medal.
Xu Yiheng is 17 years old now, and he is a senior student in high school.
Xu met Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., an astrophysicist and the 1993 Nobel laureate in Physics, and Jin-Quan Yu, professor of The Scripps Research Institute and winner of MacArthur Fellows Program. He asked Yu whether he should focus on the application prospect in choosing the direction of scientific research and asked for advice on how to pick his major in the future.
“You are so young, and what you should do now is to lay a solid foundation. You should first develop a wide range of interests, then know your hobbies, and finally, focus on one discipline and make great efforts. Don’t burden yourself now. It is not necessary to ponder whether the thing you are studying is practical," said Yu. Yu told him that, to be an excellent scientist, one shouldn’t choose a direction too early to limit oneself, and one can change the major even as an undergraduate or graduate student because the most important thing is the interest and passion for scientific exploration.
On October 30, Xu returned to the High School Affiliated to Southwest University at 1:00 a.m., and he collated materials related to the forum until 3:00 a.m. At 8:00 a.m., he was preparing for the next year’s college entrance examination already in the classroom of Class Ten, Grade Three.
Source: Shangyou News