Comment by dougabug

That statement was clearly false. With an amazing teacher, an extremely bright student, focus, patience, time, etc., sure we can have the next Galois… but in the vast majority of cases, we should avoid setting kids up for failure by expecting them to easily grasp things which took humanities greatest minds centuries to grasp. Newton “invented” Calculus in the 17th Century, but these ideas had been percolating since Archimedes and even before going back two millennia.