At the age of six, child prodigy Joshua Beckford, who lives with high-functioning autism, became the youngest person ever to attend the prestigious Oxford University.
Gaining admission to Oxford University is remarkable, but attending at the age of six, when most children are in year one of primary school, is mind-blowing.
Joshua Beckford, from Tottenham, demonstrated superior intelligence and the ability to learn when he was a baby. At 10 months, his father, Knock Daniel, noticed he could identify numbers and letters on a keyboard and commit them to memory. At the age of three, he could read phonetically. He also taught himself fluent Japanese and knew how to touch type on a computer before he could write.
Joshua attended a specialist programme created by Oxford for gifted children under the age of eight. Although Joshua was two years too young, his father wrote to the university, hoping to gain admission. Luckily, after being accepted, Joshua Beckford became the youngest attending Oxford.
He took certificate courses in both history and philosophy and passed with distinction. Now, at 13 years old, the youngest scholar has dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon and was recently listed in the top 30 most remarkable people in the world with autism who have impacted society.
Beckford supports charities and fundraising activities for minorities with autism. He is the face of the National Autistic Society’s Black and Minority Campaign. He was recently appointed the Low-Income Families Education (LIFE) Support Ambassador for the Boys Mentoring Advocacy Network in parts of Africa and the United Kingdom.
The child prodigy, who has already hosted his TED talk, hopes to use this work to ‘change the world’.
