Education: Argentine Prodigy

In Argentina last week scientists had discovered a new child prodigy, a nine-year-old chemical wizard named Jorge Fernández.

Son of a cunning and ambitious onetime ironworker, Jorge swept like a whirlwind through the first two grades of school in one month at Reconquista, in the province of Santa Fé, where he was born. Then his father took him out of school, bought textbooks, let Jorge go his own way. Three years ago the boy began to scribble strange, cabalistic signs. Father Santiago Fernández thought he had suffered a nervous breakdown from too much study. But a local doctor told him his son had picked up some elementary chemical formulas, was trying to analyze and combine them.

Chemists of note have testified to Jorge’s extraordinary chemical knowledge. One was Dr. Horacio Damianovich, founder of Santa Fé’s School of Chemistry, who last week busied himself taking up a private collection for the boy. The chief chemist of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.’s Argentine branch examined Jorge, found he has the chemical background of a college sophomore. A charming, volatile lad, Jorge can rattle off the laws of Faraday, Gay-Lussac, Pascal, Torricelli faster than most scholars twice his age can follow. Last week Santa Fé’s Parliament debated the question of appropriating 50,000 pesos to continue his education, decided to turn the case over to a Senate committee for further study.