MIAMI — When he was 18 three years ago, Nathan Thomas walked into a lecture hall at Miami Dade College. But Thomas was not a freshman student -- he was the professor.
On Monday, Guinness World Records announced that it had certified Thomas as the youngest-ever male professor, breaking a record that had stood for 306 years. Thomas began teaching on Aug. 21, 2023, and he continues to break educational ground.
At 18 years, 346 days, Thomas broke the previous record held by Colin Maclaurin, a Scottish mathematician. Maclaurin was appointed a professor of mathematics at Marischal College at the University of Aberdeen in August 1717, when he was 19.
Thomas, who was born on Sept. 9, 2004, is also younger than Alia Sabur, who holds the distinction of being the youngest female professor, according to Guinness. She earned that title in 2008 at the age of 18 years, 362 days.
Thomas teaches online courses in electrical engineering at the community college, and he certainly has the background. According to Guinness, Thomas was a dual enrollee at Miami Dade when he was 10 and transferred to Florida International when he was 14, after graduating.
At the time, Thomas was the college’s youngest graduate, but that was topped in April when his brother, Noah Thomas, earned his degree -- three months younger than Nathan, according to The Reporter, the student newspaper at Miami Dade College.
Guinness said that Thomas was an honors student and earned a bachelor’s degree when he was 16 and a master’s degree when he was 18.
Thomas then began teaching COP 2270: C for Engineers in 2023, which Guinness characterized as “complex computing and programming lessons.”
“Once you’re in that setting, everyone’s there for the same reason, which is to learn,” Thomas 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.”
Thomas’ parents are both engineers, so he grew up around that method of thinking and absorbed it easily, Today reported.
It worked. Before he entered Coral Park Elementary School in 2010, Thomas had a perfect score on his kindergarten readiness assessment test, according to The Reporter.
“(My mom) 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,” Thomas told Guinness. “Now, the part about teaching that I like most is watching something click for a student. You can kind of see it happen in real time, when a concept that felt impossible a few minutes ago suddenly makes sense.
“It’s a different kind of satisfaction than solving a problem yourself, almost like getting to relive that feeling through someone else. 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.”
Thomas is continuing to learn. He is pursuing a law degree at the University of Miami School of Law and hopes earn his juris doctor in 2028.
He told The Reporter that he plans to work in the field of intellectual property law, with a focus on STEM.
“Engineering taught me how to break down complex problems in a structured way, and that’s carried over into how I approach law school now,” he told Guinness.
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