Gifted teenager creates homemade medical isotopes
TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2014 15:48 PM

In many cases, kids who take an IQ test and discover they have an above average intelligence tend to rest on those laurels. Taylor Wilson is not one of those kids. At the age of 19, he has accomplished more in the field of science than people three times his senior.

At an early age, Wilson's parents recognized not only his thirst for knowledge, but his desire to apply that knowledge in practical ways. As an elementary school student in Texarkana, Ark., he poured all his attention into the sciences, from biology and genetics to chemistry and rocket science. Wilson would be so engrossed in his projects that he would forget to eat. When he was 11, he designed his first particle accelerator with hopes of harnessing homemade radioisotopes.

The idea was formed by his desire to help his maternal grandmother beat cancer. Wilson tried to find different ways to develop medical isotopes that could be produced near patient care centers and be administered safely in hospitals everywhere. In order to reach his goal, Wilson immersed himself in more than 20 scientific fields including physics, radiation metrology and electrical engineering.

It took him three years to finish that project, finally putting the last pieces of his reactor together when he was 14. His device used a plasma core that reached 500 million degrees Fahrenheit and slammed atoms together at nearly the speed of light. Now 19, Wilson has won more than a dozen awards for his explorations in fusion-based applications for medical isotopes. In 2012, he accepted the Thiel Fellowship, which offers exceptional young people a grant of $100,000 to skip college and focus on their research and personal education. Wilson hopes to build a business that will eventually put his inventions in the hands of consumers around the world.