CALL ME DOC!

At 15 Laurent Simons has his first PhD and is working on his second – and it's all part of his ambitious plan to help humans achieve immortality.

- JANICE BECKETT-MSIZA

HE LOVES playing videos games, swimming and watching TV but that’s where the similarities end between this kid and his peers.

After all, how many other 15-year-olds have a doctorate in quantum physics and can bend your ear for hours about black holes, bosons and the mysteries of the universe?

Laurent Simons is, in fact, considered the only one in the world. The teen, who's known as Belgium's “Little Einstein”, recently entered the record books as the youngest person to have a PhD in a physical science field when he graduated from the University of Antwerp.

With an IQ of 145 — a score only about 0,1% of people the world over can brag about — Laurent’s intelligence is in the same league as brainboxes like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

He'd finished school by the age of eight and at 12 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics, having completed the three-year course in just 18 months.

Now, within three years, he’s got his doctorate.

And he’s not done with studying - immediately after his graduation ceremony he hopped aboard a train with his dad to travel to Helmholtz Munich, a research institute in Germany, to begin his second doctoral programme in medical science, focusing on artificial intelligence.

Turns out there's a poignant reason for Laurent's interest in the world of medical science: two of his grandparents had heart conditions and died when he was 11. Now he wants to use his super-intelligence to help humans gain immortality or at the very least extend our life spans.