Beautiful minds on 60 Minutes
60 Minutes has a long history of profiling people who push the boundaries of their fields with extraordinary feats.
This week, Morley Safer's profile on Jack Andraka introduced viewers to a high school student who -- at age 15 -- began developing a test to detect early pancreatic cancer.
"Mozart of Chess"
"It seems like it's supernatural." That's how 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon described chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen's ability to play and win 10 chess games -- at the same time -- without looking at a single board.
With his back to his opponents, Carlsen claimed victory by keeping track of the positions of 320 pieces in his mind. The young, Norwegian player reigns supreme in a sport played by millions.
"Jake"
No one could have predicted that Jake Barnett would even make it to college. At age two, Jake began to regress -- he stopped speaking and making eye contact. The diagnosis: autism.
Now, Jake -- a math and science prodigy who began acing college courses when he was 8 years old -- is proud of his autism. "That, I believe, is the reason why I am in college and I am so successful," he told Morley Safer.
"Derek"
When Derek Paravicini plays the piano, it's hard to believe there is anything he can't do, and yet when he is away from the keyboard, the contrast is shocking.
Derek is blind with severe disabilities. He can't tell his right hand from his left or hold anything but the simplest of conversations. Although he's unable to perform simple tasks, Derek is able to instantly play any piece of music he's ever heard.
But it isn't just that Derek remembers the music: he can transform it effortlessly into the styles of different musicians.
"Brain Man"
Known as Britain's "brain man," Daniel Tammet first made headlines when he correctly recited 22,514 digits of the infinite sequence of numbers known as Pi. And, if that doesn't impress you, he also learned a foreign language in one week.
What's extraordinary about Tammet is that, unlike most savants, he does not have an obvious mental disability and can describe his own thought process.
"The Captain is a Lady"
Believe it or not, the world of computers didn't begin with Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. In 1983, Morley Safer sat down with 76-year-old U.S. Navy Captain Grace Hopper, who helped design the legendary MARK computer series at Harvard University in the 1940s and is credited with teaching computers to "talk."
Safer's report "The Captain is a Lady" aired on March 6, 1983.
"Bluejay"
Scott Pelley profiles Jay Greenberg, a musical prodigy who by age 12 had written five full-length symphonies, putting him in the same league as Mozart.
Greenberg tells Pelley that he signs his work "Bluejay" because blue jays are small and make a lot of noise.
"Rex"
Rex Lewis-Clack was born blind, with brain damage so severe that his mother was told he might never walk or talk. And, yet he has talent beyond what most people can imagine.
Rex is a musical savant, one of a handful of people in the world who share a mysterious combination of blindness, mental disability, and musical genius.
"Genius"
"A wonderful mystery." That's what Morley Safer thinks when he meets three savants: a pianist, a math whiz, and a sculptor. All three are spectacularly talented in one skill but otherwise mentally disabled. How does savant syndrome produce "an island of brilliance" in the brain?
"Bobby Fischer"
Most of us think of chess as a thoughtful, contemplative game, but among grandmasters, chess is a blood sport. Mike Wallace learns that firsthand in this interview with the legendary Bobby Fischer, who at age 29 was training for his famous Cold War showdown against Russia's Boris Spassky.