Child genius who went to university at 12 becomes 'Britain's youngest PhD holder'

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

A child genius who attended university aged just 12 years old has now the youngest person in Britain to hold a PhD. Yasha Asley received his doctorate in applied mathematics at the University of Leicester earlier this month, aged 21.

It is believed he is now the youngest person in Britain to hold a PhD, surpassing a 22-year-old astrophysicist. Yasha, from Leicester, started attending his local university before he was even a teenager - accompanied by dad Moussa Asley, 61, who quit his job as an accountant to support his son.

Yasha - once dubbed the "human calculator" is keeping an open mind about what the future holds, saying: “I’m looking to maybe work in AI field or data mining, but I really don’t know yet.” On receiving the PhD he said: “It feels amazing to have achieved this feat.

I am very happy and would like to thank all my lecturers for their help. "It was not my intention to go to uni so early but now that I have reached this stage I am elated that it worked out well for me." Moussa says he is not surprised by his son’s latest feat but said: “To be frank – I was expecting him to finish two or three years ago! “Were it not for Covid I think he would have finished much earlier but I am over the moon.” Yasha took both his GCSEs and A-Levels aged nine, and is fluent in French and Persian.