18-year

At 18 years old, Nathan Thomas walked into a lecture hall at Miami Dade College in August 2023, like many others his age.

Except that Thomas wasn’t a freshman. He was the professor.

His role at Miami Dade College earned him an even greater title, revealed Monday. According to Guinness World Records, he is the youngest-ever male professor.

In August 2023, Thomas was 18 years and 346 days old. He beat a 306-year-old record, held by 19-year-old Colin Maclaurin.

At the time, he was also just barely (16 days) younger than Alia Sabur, who claimed the title of youngest female professor when she stood in front of a classroom in 2008 at 18 years and 362 days old. According to Guinness, she was a full-time faculty member of the department of advanced technology fusion at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea.

Thomas had already earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, both with honors, according to Guinness. He enrolled in Miami Dade College when he was 10 years old, before transferring at 14 to Florida International University, which is where he earned both degrees.

Thomas then took his talents to COP 2270: C for Engineers in 2023, which the record counter described as “complex computing and programming lessons.”

“Once you’re in that setting, everyone’s there for the same reason, which is to learn,” he told Guinness. “Age doesn’t really factor into that.”

“I just focus on trying to do my job well and helping students in whatever way I can. If someone’s willing to put in the effort, that’s really all that matters to me,” he added.

Thomas said he was drawn to STEM partly because both his parents are engineers, and because math always “clicked” for him, he told Guinness.

His mother “had a way of making things feel simple even when they weren’t, and I think some of that stuck with me more than I realized at the time,” he said.

He noted that his favorite thing about teaching is watching students experience the material “click” for them as it did for him.

“It’s a different kind of satisfaction than solving a problem yourself, almost like getting to relive that feeling through someone else,” Thomas continued. “Teaching something forces you to understand it on a whole other level — so I end up learning just as much from it as the students do, if not more.”

He has since enrolled in the University of Miami School of Law to earn his juris doctor degree. According to Guinness, he is still teaching online courses and plans to graduate with his law degree in 2028.