William Maillis is not your typical 11-year-old; he’s out to prove Stephen Hawking wrong.
At an age when most kids are focused on beating the next level in a video game, or working toward actually hitting the ball in their baseball game on Saturday, William Maillis spending his time studying science, researching, and looking into the flaws of Stephen Hawking’s theory that God does not exist.
Most kids dream of becoming a firefighter, a doctor, maybe an astronaut or a teacher, but William Maillis isn’t just dreaming of becoming an astrophysicist, he’s already becoming one.
The boy from Pennsylvania, graduated high school in May of 2016, at the age of 9. After attending community college classes at St. Petersburg College and graduating with an associate in arts degree in July of 2018, he enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University to become an astrophysicist.
According to his father, Peter , William Maillis began speaking in full sentences as a young baby; he was only seven months old when he could speak in full sentences. He was doing addition at 21 months–that’s less than 2 years old, and multiplication by the age of two. In addition to being able to add and multiply like a proficient middle-elementary student, William Maillis was also reading children’s books, and writing his own nine-page book, called “Happy Cat.” At four years old, William Maillis was learning algebra, sign language, and how to read Greek. In elementary schools, algebra isn’t formally learned until at least fifth grade, and when he was five, he read an entire 209-page geometry textbook in one night and woke up solving circumference problems the next morning. Even in high school, a majority of us did not have the mental capacity to do that…probably even now.
William Maillis is literally a GENIUS, and has been declared one by Ohio State University psychologist, Joanne Ruthsatz.
William Maillis’ desire to become an astrophysicist is rooted in his strong faith beliefs. He disagrees with some of Einstein and Stephen Hawking’s theories on black holes and has his own ideas to prove the existence of the universe.
The son of a Greek Orthodox Priest, William wants to prove that an outside force is the only thing capable of creating the universe, which means that “God does exist.”
Stephen Hawking, however, who passed away at the age of 76, held a much different assertion. “Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now science offers a more convincing explanation,” once said the renowned physicist. “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is we would know everything that God would know if there was a God, but there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”
William’s parents say they have never pushed him toward his studies or this God-proving endeavor, but rather that he’s a pretty “normal” 11-year-old.
“We’re normal people,” Peter explained. “And he’s a normal kid. You can’t distinguish him from other 11-year-olds. He likes sports, television shows, the computer and video games like everyone else.”
But still, distinct from other kids his age, William’s ultimate life passion is perfectly clear. When asked what his “dream” is, the child prodigy had no hesitation in his response.
“I want to be an astrophysicist so that I can prove to the scientific world that God does exist,” William said in a recent interview with Hellenic College Holy Cross.
