Just four months shy of his 10th birthday, Carlos Santamaría Díaz received a diploma for completing a biochemistry and molecular biology course at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, according to Animal Politico.
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The boy genius put in 140 hours of work and earned high marks for the class, with the subject of protein structure obviously being his jam (because he scored a 10 – the highest grade possible.) He got an 8 in methods of protein purification and analysis, and a 9 in principles of molecular biology and protein expression. In other words, he got two As and one B.
At the ceremony, his father Fabián announced that the young savant would start attending a high-level algebra class that meets three times a week. “Not only for academic purposes, but also to see how he adapts to a degree course and what the professors think of him, while we as parents will also evaluate how he is doing,” Fabián said.
Oh yeah, and on top of attending UNAM, Carlos is also taking fourth grade classes online and participates in sports. Though he was playing with his toys during the ceremony, UNAM said that it’s easy to forget that Carlos is just a child.
His classmate, 24-year-old Rafael Fernández Torres, said, “We get along really well; it’s interesting that at the beginning you’re just talking to a young child, but speaking to him more, you realize that he’s brilliant and knows about a lot of different things – this makes it easier to talk to him. We talk about the classwork, or his other interests.”