The payoff of this article is even better than the headline hints at; I was expecting the kid to be involved in some interesting, but relatively peripheral way. The kid's idea was actually central, and the kid apparently did the bulk of the work, too. Really fun reading.

He (the kid) was listed as First Author with his affiliation, Lord Byng Secondary School. How cool is that?

I wonder if he is the youngest person with a finite erdos number then.

Look like Biology Letters accept articles from even younger people: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/12/2...

Great example of how treating a kid like he can think creates a kid who thinks, big kudos to dad for that, too.

Agreed. My favorite quote from the article:

“I told Julian that when people say something is impossible, they sometimes tell you more about themselves than anything.”

I've said these exact words to my niece before. I've no idea of the origin, but it's a nice little piece of wisdom.

Seems like the writeup in TFA missed an opportunity to educate us about how to involve youngsters in science, breezing over how "He persuaded Julian’s teacher to give him some time away from school to test his ideas for himself".

Seems to me that that is where the real broad-appeal lesson lies.

Good job on the dads part for talking about cognitive processing at the dinner table to his 12 year old son! When you treat adolescents like thinking adults, they almost always prove themselves to be extremely capable. So many people see the result of treating adolescents like imbeciles that can't be trusted with the simplest things and just conclude that it must be a natural property of being that age, it's really sad.

And kudos to young Mr. Levy for thinking creatively enough to bring us new insights into the workings of the human mind!

A link to the full paper:

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10...

Great work from a 12 (or did it say 14?) year old.

I saw both. May have started the work when he was 12 and published at 14.

Ghostbusters' Vigo had prior art.