Noam Elkies

Noam Elkies is a mathematics prodigy from United States (born 1966). He won a Putnam gold medal at sixteen and at twenty-six became the youngest person ever granted tenure at Harvard. Noam was 26 when it happened.

Mathematical precocity is the most studied form of giftedness, tracked for half a century by programmes such as the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. Its value as a predictor is real but imperfect: many early standouts leave the field, and many major mathematicians were never identified as children.

What separates a documented record from a family anecdote is that someone else wrote it down at the time. Noam's is recorded in published reference sources, with a date and a figure attached, and that is the standard applied to every entry in this index. Where an age or a date is disputed in the sources, this page follows the published record and says so rather than choosing the more impressive number.

Born in 1966, Noam belongs to a long line of United States names in this field, and the entry is maintained as new results are published.

Records like this one rarely survive untouched. The age thresholds that define early achievement keep falling as training methods, coaching and access to competition spread to more countries, and each generation of mathematics prodigys reaches the standard a little sooner than the last. Whether Noam's mark has since been beaten is noted above; the achievement itself is fixed to its date and stands on the record as it was set.