When Peter Maillis told his 7-month-old son William to go to bed, William replied, “I don’t want to,” KDKA reports. It was clear from very early on that William was no ordinary child, and he recently proved that once again by becoming—at 9 years old—one of the youngest people ever to be accepted into college. According to People, William graduated from high school in May, is currently taking classes at Community College of Allegheny County, and will enrol in Carnegie Mellon University next fall. A psychologist declared William a genius at just 5 years old, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. By that time, he knew multiplication, reading, and writing (2 years old); could use sign language and read Greek (4 years old); and had learned geometry in one night (5 years old).
William says being the youngest person in his college classes doesn’t bother him. “I’m used to it by now,” he tells People. (Even at home, William’s siblings are 17 and 20 years older than he is.) And the dean at CCAC tells KDKA that William is “more than excelling,” earning As in all the courses he’s taken. William hopes to become an astrophysicist, and he already disagrees with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking when it comes to black holes. His ultimate goal? “I want to prove to everybody that God does exist,” he tells People. “I tell him, ‘God gave you a gift,'” Peter Maillis, a Greek Orthodox priest, says. “The worst thing would be to reject that gift and not use it for the betterment of the world.”