Ask HN: Examples of young people who did hard things?

[neilshevlin]

Looking to do some research on the common traits, attitudes, struggles, techniques etc that very young people had throughout history.

Could be historic, scientific, personal etc. Anything which makes you reflect about the unlikeliness of you being able to do it yourself fits the bill.

[cyberdrunk]

Most people's lives through history was super hard. Just read some novels on XIX century or earlier (but not on lives of elites) and you'll see impressive young people being able to cope with conditions that would cause typical western XXI century person to crush under depression.

For example, even my grandmother, during German occupation of Poland, was able to take care of her younger siblings and bedridden mother, while being 14-16 years old. And, by "taking care of" I mean plowing the (small) fields they had, feeding the cow, making sure the siblings aren't starving, fending off Germans and their random executions of Polish commonpeople etc. By today's standards it's absolutely extraordinary, but it wasn't really uncommon back then.

[sgillen]

Check out galios, laid the foundations for two a whole fields of math and then died at age 20 in a duel.

[jxub]

*Galois

[keiferski]

Most of the Founding Fathers were pretty young. Doesn’t get much harder than building a new country from scratch.

Some were older, like Thomas Jefferson who was 33, John Hancock who was 39, or Benjamin Franklin who was 70. Others were shockingly young — even teenagers. James Monroe, for example, was 18 and Alexander Hamilton was 21. Madison was 25.

[coip]

Hmm Steve Jobs was young when he started things?

[helph67]

Woz had something to do with the creation of Apple too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak

[coip]

Good point, Woz was a germane contributor

[coip]

What’s young?