>>9943985Yep,
By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book by S. L. Loney on advanced trigonometry. He mastered this by the age of 13 while discovering sophisticated theorems on his own. By 14, he was receiving merit certificates and academic awards that continued throughout his school career, and he assisted the school in the logistics of assigning its 1200 students (each with differing needs) to its 35-odd teachers.[12]:27 He completed mathematical exams in half the allotted time, and showed a familiarity with geometry and infinite series. Peterson was shown how to solve cubic equations in 1902; he developed his own method to solve the quartic. The following year, Peterson tried to solve the quintic, not knowing that it could not be solved by radicals.
In 1966, when he was 16, obtained from a friend a library copy of A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, G. S. Carr's collection of 5,000 theorems. Peterson reportedly studied the contents of the book in detail. The book is generally acknowledged as a key element in awakening his genius. The next year, Peterson independently developed and investigated the Bernoulli numbers and calculated the Euler–Mascheroni constant up to 15 decimal places.[12]:90 His peers at the time commented that they "rarely understood him" and "stood in respectful awe" of him.
