12-Year-Old Prodigy, Who Memorized the Periodic Table at Age 2, Heads to NYU After Accelerated High School Journey

Suborno Isaac Bari, 12, just graduated from high school and wants to study math and physics at New York University starting in the fall. But he wants to go even further and start a master’s program.

“I hope to finish college at age 14 in the spring of 2026,” Suborno said. He was the youngest person to graduate from high school on Long Island.

“I want to focus on math more than anything else,” he told CNN. “If I ever decide to do a second Ph.D., it will be in physics.”

The smart tween learned the periodic table by heart when he was 2 years old and has been giving talks at colleges in India since he was 7. He graduated from Malverne High School in Nassau County, New York, on Wednesday.

CNN affiliate WABC-TV claimed that Suborno was the youngest person to ever graduate from high school. He says he skipped to 12th grade after finishing work in ninth grade.

That’s right, Suborno says his high school doesn’t use a 4.0 scale for GPAs. He says he got about a 96 in his first year of high school and a 98 in his second and last year.

When he was in the 12th grade, Suborno took classes at NYU, Stony Brook University, the City University of New York, and Brooklyn College that were not required for a degree.

“That was something new for me,” he said. “You have a lot more homework, classes last a lot longer, and you learn a lot of new things in a lot less time than you did in school.”

The young student is smart, and his family says he’s also good at drawing, debating, and playing the piano. When he starts working on his bachelor of science degree at NYU, he could also be making history.

A spokesperson for the university told the Bari family, “without NYU undertaking a complete review of its records, NYU is unaware of anyone younger than Suborno being admitted.” This was stated in an email that was shared with CNN.

Rashidul and Shaheda Bari, Suborno’s parents, got him interested in school at a young age. Rashidul is his father and Shaheda is his mother. Rashidul teaches physics at Brooklyn Technical High School and Shaheda teaches first grade.

As Rashidul Bari says, they saw that their youngest son was very smart in 2014 when they were teaching him simple math.

“At that time, my wife was his teacher.” When she taught him one plus one one day, he would say, “Mom, one plus one is two,” Rashidul Bari said. “Then Mom would ask, ‘Then what is one plus two?'” He would then say “three,” and then he would ask his mom, “If one plus one is two, then what is n plus n?”

What Shaheda Bari’s husband says is that the questions caught her off guard. Rashidul Bari says he didn’t pay attention at first because his smartest son, Refath Bari, 21, who goes to Brown University, was also there.

Rashidul Bari said, “I told my wife, ‘OK, there’s nothing strange about this. He probably did it to get attention.'” It happened again and again. He started to abstract every math idea.

The interesting finding was shared by Suborno’s dad, who was a math student at the time, with one of his teachers.

“My professor told me, ‘No way, a two-year-old can’t do that.'” Rashidul Bari told them, “You should pay close attention.”

His dad said that Suborno kept getting noticed, which led to him being asked to take classes at the college level.

In 2016, Barack Obama, who was president at the time, wrote Suborno a letter congratulating the smart student for all of his hard work and successes. CNN got a copy of the letter from the family.

He started getting requests to teach from schools in India when he was seven years old, in 2020. His dad says he does this three times a year.

Rashidul Bari said, “That gives him a lot of chances to talk to people with different levels of knowledge, like students, professors, college presidents, and so on.”

Mensa told his family that he couldn’t have an IQ test until he was 14. This is about the time that Suborno says he hopes to graduate from NYU.

Suborno wants to become a math and physics professor one day, following in the footsteps of his family who have always taught.

He said that starting at NYU in the fall was “completely crazy.” “I can’t wait for all the chances I’ll get. I can’t wait to meet people who are really interested in math and science, as well as people who are majoring in math and physics and want to figure out these mysteries of the universe.”