A two-year child of Afro-Caribbean immigrants has become the youngest member of British Mensa, the exclusive club of Britain’s brightest people, after scoring 141 in its famously tough IQ test, a ranking that apparently makes him smarter than Barack Obama and David Cameron, who got a first class honours degree at Oxford.
Adam Kirby from South London fell just four short of the “genius level” putting him way above the average Briton’s IQ of 100. Even though he is barely able to speak in full sentences yet, he is said to enjoy reading Shakespeare, and is learning Japanese, Spanish and French at an age when children are more likely to be struggling to make sense of elementary alphabets.
Adam has even mastered a world map puzzle designed for adults. According to his parents, Dean Kirby and Kerry-Ann, they realised he was different when he “potty-trained’’ himself after reading a book on the subject, when he was barely one.
“Adam’s abilities are outstanding and we’ve been actively developing his intelligence since he was 10 weeks old - but we’re certainly delighted for him. While most children are just learning to stand up or crawl, Adam was reading books, his development was just mind-blowingly quick. We used to show him cards with the words hippopotamus and rhinoceros on them and he could identify the right animals most of the time,’' Mr. Kirby, an IT consultant, told The Daily Mail .
John Stevenage, chief executive of British Mensa, said Adam was destined for a bright future.
“We look forward to Adam joining Mensa and expect him to have a very bright future,” he said.