Guinness World Records has confirmed 21-year-old Nathan Thomas of Florida as the youngest male professor in history, a title he earned when he began teaching engineering at Miami Dade College at 18 years and 346 days old.
Thomas's record breaks a mark that had stood for more than 300 years: mathematician Colin Maclaurin, who became a professor at the University of Aberdeen at 19 in 1717. Thomas started college at age 10 and earned a master's degree in electrical engineering by 18, before joining Miami Dade College's faculty in August 2023. He was roughly 16 days older than Alia Sabur, who set the equivalent record for women in 2008 at 18 years and 362 days old.
Thomas continues to teach engineering at the college, instructing students close to his own age — a dynamic he has described as central to how he approaches the classroom, drawing on his own experience as a young student navigating higher education far earlier than most of his peers.
Guinness World Records confirmed the title this week, with the organization noting the rarity of the achievement given how few students accelerate through undergraduate and graduate study quickly enough to begin a full-time academic career before turning 19. Thomas's path — starting college at 10, finishing a master's degree by 18, and stepping into a professorship days before his 19th birthday — places him among a small handful of prodigies whose academic advancement has been formally verified by the record-keeping organization.
The record adds to a growing list of Guinness-verified academic prodigies whose achievements have drawn public fascination in recent years, as accelerated-learning programs and early-college enrollment have made it possible for a small number of exceptionally advanced students to compress traditional academic timelines by a decade or more. Thomas's case is notable both for the scale of the acceleration and for his choice to remain in the classroom as a teacher rather than pursue further advanced study immediately.