Chiang Ti Ming - a real star now

Chiang who???

Chiang Ti Ming- IQ exceeded 180. Genius. Child prodigy. Record breaker in CalTech and Cornell.

There is a saying that dead people turn into stars. Ti Ming is now a star.

I heard a lot about him when I was in school. As the world is really small, I had friends who knew his family-that was why his life did not seem to be too far away from mine. In school, my friends and I followed his progress closely, and were "cheering" him on, hoping that he would "get it". Of course, we were envious of him too.

A little boy trapped by a brain of immense capacity, or a brain trapped in the body of a little boy. A genius born into a country where merit did not and still do not count as much as your color.

We heard of his mega giga capacity brains and him endlessly. We listened to stories about how this kid was so respected by his classmates in school who were much older than him. We heard of his struggle to gain a place in a Malaysian university, and the problems he faced because he tried to sit for the A-levels equivalent at the age of 12. He was too young, and his country had not place for someone like him.

The universities in his own country had rejected him, and the only way out for him was a foreign university.We followed the story, and relieved when his family eventually raised enough funds for him to go to Caltech, supported by private organizations and some the Malaysian Chinese communities who felt the injustice this guy had to endure. Not only he was rejected from local universities, he did not get any official help in the form of scholarship or university placements when hundreds of "good" students were dished out scholarships every year!

We heard of his parents' despair at the death of their daughter, reportedly a genius too. And soon, I will hear about his parents' grief of the death of their only surviving child from my friends. Two children. Both geniuses. Both...stars-then and now.

I used to wonder why I was not a genius! It would be nice to just sit, look, and know everything (that is what people say about him absorbing everything in classes!). But now I begin to love my " mediocrity". What an irony. 16 years would have change a person's perspective totally about intelligence.

His death generated only 2 mentioned in the newspapers, and some blogs. For someone like him, I thought he deserves at least one more mention. Whatever the cause or reasons for his death, this was a guy who had beaten more odds than you or me.

Being "gifted", especially when the gift is huge, is a "burden". Some bloggers say some unkind things about him pushing boundaries and doing things inappropriate for his age. Some blamed his parents. Sigh... is this the darker side of human beings-- again???

I know others who I would consider as "geniuses", and can see how difficult it is for their parents to raise them. It is much easier to manage and nurture an idiot, than a genius, and this guy was a super genius!

Below is a newspaper article about his death.
___________________________________________________________

Monday January 8, 2007

‘Boy genius’ Chiang dies

SEREMBAN: Chiang Ti Ming, the boy genius who was the youngest student ever to be admitted into the prestigious California Institute of Technology (CalTech) almost two decades ago, has passed away on Saturday morning.

Chiang: Had achieved many firsts at CalTech

“He passed away peacefully,” said a family member yesterday.

The family declined to reveal other details while Chiang’s parents, father Chiang Chick Liam and mother Lee Soo Hoon, were too distraught to talk to the press.

Only his family members were seen entering the house here yesterday afternoon and requested that privacy be given to them.

Press reports in 2002 said that he had been admitted into a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, for depression and withdrawal symptoms. The family also suffered a tragic loss when his sister Eei Wern, drowned at the swimming pool of the Seremban International Golf Club in 1993. Eei Wern was then four.

It was reported 16 years ago that Chiang, who was 15 at the time, was not only the youngest student to be admitted into CalTech but also among the top five percent where his results were concerned.

Chiang had achieved many firsts while at CalTech, including being the youngest ever student to receive the Undergraduate Students Merit Award two years in a row.

He was also an honorary member of the Tau Beta Phi, a national engineering society.

He had been accepted to study for the second year of the four-year Physics degree course at the university in 1989 when he was 13 after sponsorship from several organisations.

The prodigy later pursued and graduated with a doctorate in particle physics at Cornell University in New York.