[shogunmike]

One famous, although admittedly not particularly recent, example of a mathematical autodidact is Srinivasa Ramanujan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan).

[melling]

How does bringing a genius into the conversation in anyway answer the question?

Hopefully, they do a good story with the most recent movie on Ramanujan's life:

http://deadline.com/2015/09/the-man-who-knew-infinity-exclus...