Taylor Wilson (nuclear physicist)

Arkansas Business writes that he grew up in Nashville (Howard County) and Texarkana, ArkansasArkansasArkansas is a U.S. state bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital and largest city is Little Rock. Arkansas was admitted to the Union on June 15, 1836, as the 25th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 3,011,524.Open the full entry. The long profile that Popular Science published in 2012 states that Texarkana, on the border of Arkansas and TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, was the Wilson family’s hometown.⁠[1][2]

His father, Kenneth Wilson, is a Coca-Cola bottler, a skier and a former football player; his mother, Tiffany Wilson, is a yoga instructor. Kenneth Wilson says in Popular Science’s profile that neither of them knew anything about science, and the page that introduces Tom Clynes’s biography of him also states that his parents are not scientists.⁠[2][3][4]

He has a brother, Joey, three years younger and gifted in mathematics; Popular Science also mentions Ashlee, Kenneth Wilson’s daughter from a previous marriage, who was then a college student and came to live with the Wilsons.⁠[2]

Popular Science writes that as a small child he preferred real traffic cones and barricades to toys and at four was directing traffic; for his fifth birthday he asked for, and got, a real crane. His parents say their aim was to help their children discover who they are and then to nurture that.⁠[2]

National Geographic’s 2014 profile states that in elementary school in Texarkana his interests moved from biology and genetics to chemistry and rocketry; his father, Kenneth Wilson, says “He got obsessed,” and the family says that getting him to eat was often a challenge. The page introducing Tom Clynes’s book states that by the age of nine he had mastered rocket propulsion and was designing and building his own rockets at home in Texarkana.⁠[5][4]

At nine he visited the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry with his father and asked first of all to see propulsion; Popular Science writes that he poured out an explanation of rocket propulsion to the tour guide, who ran off to fetch the center’s director. A National Geographic photo caption states that at nine he made biodiesel from methanol and sodium hydroxide in the hope that his father would use it to fuel the Coca-Cola delivery fleet.⁠[2][3]

He dates his start in nuclear science to the age of ten: in the IAEA interview he says that at ten he was fascinated by probing the make-up of the universe at a small scale, and on KNPR he said, “At 10 years old, I got into nuclear science, and just kind of went on this journey of discovery and experimentation.” Popular Science writes that at ten he hung a periodic table in his room and within a week had memorized the atomic numbers, masses and melting points, and that the next summer a potassium nitrate device he had made exploded in the backyard, producing a small mushroom cloud.⁠[6][7][2]

Popular Science writes that for his 11th birthday his grandmother took him to a bookstore, that he read The Radioactive Boy Scout, the book about David Hahn, and that he said he could do what Hahn had attempted; National Geographic writes that he read Ken Silverstein’s book in fifth grade and that his parents, wary at first, let him begin with a science fair project on harmless everyday radioactive materials. Popular Science writes that for this science fair project his father, Kenneth Wilson, borrowed a Geiger counter from a friend at Texarkana’s emergency management agency and used it to scan old objects such as radium-dial clocks and uranium-glazed plates; his father also asked a nuclear pharmacist friend to check his safety practices, and he assured his parents that he was “the responsible radioactive boy scout.”⁠[2][5]

NPR’s TED Radio Hour states that he collected radioactive material from smoke detectors, radium clocks, uranium-glazed Fiestaware and uranium ore that he dug up in the desert; of the deuterium fuel he says, “I asked for that for Christmas one year.” On Dragonfly Energy’s podcast he says that he built small particle accelerators at about 11 or 12, and National Geographic writes that at eleven he tried to build an atom smasher.⁠[8][9][5]

At eleven he learned that his grandmother, his biggest supporter, who let him use her garage as his laboratory, had cancer. National Geographic’s interview with Tom Clynes states that he tested her urine with a Geiger counter and dissected bits of her tumors and lungs, and then began looking for cheaper ways to produce medical isotopes for regions such as sub-Saharan Africa; National Geographic’s 2014 profile states that after her cancer returned he proposed small, cheap, safe reactors that could make medical isotopes at hospitals. Popular Science writes that his mother, Tiffany Wilson, had just lost her sister, her only sibling, that her mother’s cancer had come out of remission and that the doctor had given his grandmother a few weeks to live; he asked himself whether he could build a fusion reactor small, cheap and safe enough to produce isotopes as needed in every hospital in the world.⁠[3][5][2][4]

On his personal website he writes that SEFOR, the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor, stands in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas, about 30 minutes by car south of the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, and he calls Arkansas his and SEFOR’s “shared home state.” He writes that it was one of the first nuclear sites he explored in depth, shortly after his 12th birthday, and dates that original visit to June 1, 2006; the page presents photographs under the headings control room, refueling and waste handling bay, inside containment, inside the refueling cell, under the reactor core, secondary sodium equipment and exterior.⁠[10]

The Wilson family moved from Texarkana to Reno, NevadaNevadaNevada is a state in the western United States bordered by Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and California; its capital is Carson City. It was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, as the 36th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,104,614.Open the full entry, and enrolled him at the Davidson Academy; Mental Floss writes that his IQ tested in the “99.99 percentile.” Popular Science writes that both he and his brother Joey were accepted to the academy; National Geographic writes that his parents moved the family to Reno so that he and his brother could attend a public school for profoundly gifted children. Xconomy’s book review states that his local high school could not meet his educational needs.⁠[11][2][5][12][1]

Popular Science writes that the Davidson Academy, a subsidized public school, was founded in 2006 by the software entrepreneurs Janice and Robert Davidson; the University of Nevada, Reno, describes it as a free public school for profoundly gifted middle and high school students on its campus. National Geographic’s interview with Tom Clynes states that the school takes students who score in the top tenth of one percent on standardized tests and that students can take higher-level classes at the university next door and pursue engineering projects with mentors, as he did.⁠[2][13][3]

Mental Floss writes that when he mentioned a garage reactor to his physics teacher, George Ochs, Ochs’s reaction was “Whoa, wait a minute.” Popular Science writes that the University of Nevada physicist Friedwardt Winterberg was dismissive of his plan to build a fusor insisting that he first master calculus.⁠[11][2]

Nevada Today of the University of Nevada, Reno, writes that in 2008 he met Foundation Professor Ron Phaneuf as a 13-year-old Davidson Academy student; on the first visit he toured the lab with his father, Kenneth Wilson, and said that he aimed to build a fusor to create nuclear fusion and had already begun gathering materials in the family garage. Phaneuf said that even then he had “a solid, fundamental understanding” of the science and offered him a corner of the physics lab; Phaneuf recalled that Kenneth Wilson gave a sigh of relief.⁠[13]

The article describes Phaneuf as a recognized leader in experimental atomic and molecular physics who came to the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1992 from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he had worked in the fusion program; he chaired the physics department for many years and led the development of the Nevada Terawatt Facility. Other university staff also mentored him: Bill Brinsmead, a development technician since retired, helped obtain donated or surplus equipment from institutions including the Lawrence Livermore and BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry national laboratories, assembled it and supervised the measurements; the machinists Dennis Meredith and Wade Cline machined and welded some critical components; and the radiation safety officer Myung Chul Jo monitored his work and lent him radiation detectors and instruments. He completed the university’s laboratory and radiation safety training, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission receives reports on his work, and his fusor is registered with the State of Nevada.⁠[13]

Popular Science writes that he contacted Carl Willis, then a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate living in Albuquerque and one of the few people who had built a working fusion reactor. He and his mother visited Willis in Albuquerque and, with Willis and the Popular Science writer, searched a New MexicoNew MexicoNew Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States. Its capital is Santa Fe and its largest city is Albuquerque. It was admitted to the Union on January 6, 1912, as the 47th state, and had a population of 2,117,522 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry mesa for the remains of a Mark 17 hydrogen bomb accidentally dropped there in May 1957, finding radioactive fragments; Willis gave him a piece of the bomb casing, and on the way back they checked about 60 pounds of uranium, bomb fragments and radioactive shards as excess baggage and flew home to Reno. On his personal website he writes that he first visited the Bayo Canyon test site at Los Alamos in 2008, with Carl Willis on the early visits; debris of lead, copper, steel and natural and depleted uranium remains at ground zero, much of it still radioactive to some degree.⁠[2][14]

Popular Science writes that through his first year at the Davidson Academy he spent his afternoons in a corner of Phaneuf’s lab designing the reactor and solving its vacuum and electrical problems, drawing on more than 20 technical fields; showing him the storerooms, Brinsmead and Phaneuf came across a thick-walled stainless-steel high-vacuum chamber, Phaneuf helped him find a surplus high-voltage insulator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Willis, then working at a company that builds particle accelerators, talked his boss into parting with an expensive high-voltage power supply. Shortly after his 14th birthday he and Brinsmead loaded deuterium fuel, started the reactor and confirmed neutrons, making him, in Popular Science’s words, “the 32nd individual on the planet to achieve a nuclear-fusion reaction”; the page introducing Tom Clynes’s book calls him one of 32 people to have built a working fusion reactor.⁠[2][4]

The University of Nevada, Reno, writes that by 14 he had become the youngest person to build a Farnsworth fusor and successfully achieve fusion; KNPR and the RSA Conference give the year as 2008, while the IAEA interview gives it as 2009. On his personal website he writes that his first reactor was an inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) device derived from Philo T. Farnsworth’s 1960s “Fusor,” with a grid of 98 percent tantalum and 2 percent tungsten and fuels that can include deuterium, helium-3 and boron-11; its fusion power was tiny compared with the power put in, but the neutrons from deuterium fusion could be used to create unstable atoms and to identify unknown materials remotely. In his website’s gallery he writes that in his first IEC fusion device fusion reactions rose sharply as the accelerating potential was raised toward 50 keV.⁠[13][7][15][6][16][17]

For the plasma temperature, Popular Science writes that at 50,000 volts the plasma reached about 580 million degrees, some 40 times as hot as the core of the sun; the page introducing Tom Clynes’s book gives 500 million degrees, and Helena gives forty times as hot as the sun. Accounts differ on where the device was built: TED’s talk descriptions, NPR and a 2022 University of Nevada, Reno, article say he built the reactor in his parents’ garage, and Helena says he achieved fusion in his home state of Arkansas, in his reactor in his parents’ garage; TED’s speaker page says that the University of Nevada, Reno, hosted his early experiments after his parents learned he planned to build the reactor in the garage, Popular Science and the university’s 2012 article place his work in a corner of Phaneuf’s physics lab, and KNPR writes that the fusion actually took place in a basement at the university, quoting him that the physics department gave him a lab in its “sub basement.” In 2022 he said at the university, “Fusion reactions themselves are easy, I did it here in the physics department when I was I was 14.”⁠[2][4][18][19][20][8][21][13][7][22]

Mental Floss writes that at 15 he met officials of the Department of Homeland Security and asked them, “You know your building’s radio-active, right?”: the granite around the building contained unusually high levels of uranium. In May 2010 he entered his fusion reactor in a series of science fairs that won him a trip to Switzerland to tour the Large Hadron Collider.⁠[11]

On his personal website he writes that early in his career he asked how Cherenkov detection could help interdict nuclear material in portal monitoring of cargo containers, at a time when portal monitoring had severely depleted stockpiles of helium-3; his first prototype neutron detector was based on the Cherenkov effect and captured neutrons with natural gadolinium ions dissolved in ordinary light water, and he writes that such detectors use low-cost raw materials and have very little natural background. Mental Floss writes that the detector, based on water and gadolinium, cost “a few hundred bucks” and that he filed for a patent.⁠[23][11]

Popular Science writes that he proposed a drive-through device that would use neutrons from a small reactor to scan shipping containers at ports for weapons, and that the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office of the Department of Homeland Security invited him to submit a grant proposal to develop the detector; he also met Kristina Johnson, then Under Secretary of Energy, who said the meeting left her “stunned.” National Geographic’s interview with Tom Clynes states that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy invited him to Washington to submit a grant proposal. Mental Floss writes that, to protect his intellectual property, he refused their funding offers, whereas Science News wrote in 2011 that his work received funding from the Department of Homeland Security.⁠[2][3][11][24]

Mental Floss writes that after an earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011 caused an accident at one of the country’s nuclear power plants, he found trace amounts of iodine-131 and cesium-137 in milk and spinach, and that after publicizing the results he received “a lot of angry calls from the dairy association.” On a podcast in 2024 he said that Fukushima reinforced for him how powerful the technology is and led him to think about how to bring nuclear power into the 21st century.⁠[11][9]

On May 13, 2011, Society for Science announced the winners of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles; he, from Reno, received an IntelIntelIntel is a semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968; it introduced the 4004 microprocessor in 1971, its x86 processors have long powered personal computers, it has pursued a foundry strategy since 2021, and Lip-Bu Tan has been its chief executive officer since 2025.Open the full entry Foundation Young Scientist Award and $50,000. The release states that he had developed one of the lowest-dose and highest-sensitivity interrogation systems for countering nuclear terrorism. The University of Nevada, Reno, writes that he was one of three Young Scientist Award winners that year and was later invited to brief Department of Homeland Security officials.⁠[25][13]

Science News writes that the 17-year-old used a fusion reactor he had built to fuse deuterium atoms and create neutrons, fired the neutrons into cargo containers and read the returning radiation signatures to detect materials such as weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium; unlike other detection methods that rely on helium-3, his relies on cheap, nontoxic water and could screen border crossings or ports. Mental Floss writes that Raytheon, the fifth-largest defense contractor in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, tried to hire him and that numerous universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recruited him to help with research projects.⁠[24][11]

On his overall record at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Popular Science writes that over three years he won nine awards, including first place overall, along with overseas trips and more than $100,000 in prizes, while National Geographic writes that over four years he won more than a dozen awards, including the top award in physics and the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award. When Intel’s chief executive, Paul Otellini, heard that a 14-year-old had built a working fusion reactor, he went straight to his exhibit; National Geographic quotes Otellini: “I am so glad that this kid is on our side.”⁠[2][5]

On February 7, 2012, Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Obama (born 1961) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, the first African American to hold the office. He was previously an Illinois state senator and a U.S. senator from Illinois, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.Open the full entry hosted the White House Science Fair; a White House photo caption states that the 17-year-old from Reno had researched novel techniques for detecting nuclear threats and developed an environmentally friendly, cost-effective and highly sensitive system able to detect small amounts of nuclear material, and that the President spoke with him. The University of Nevada, Reno, writes that the same month Popular Science published Tom Clynes’s long profile of him and that CBSCBSCBS is an American commercial broadcast television network. It was founded in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters, renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, and grew from a radio network into a television network under William S. Paley. With ABC and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it has been owned in turn by Westinghouse, Viacom, ViacomCBS and Paramount Global, has been owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation since 2025, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry Evening News visited the campus in March; he was then preparing a medical innovation project for the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, held in Pittsburgh on May 13–18.⁠[26][13][2]

In March 2012 he gave the 3-minute-15-second talk “Yup, I built a nuclear fusion reactor” at TED2012. The University of Nevada, Reno, writes that he took the TED stage with only a day’s notice and that the talk received a standing ovation; TED’s description says that, then 17, he took the stage at short notice to tell the short version of his story.⁠[19][13]

On May 8, 2012, the University of Nevada, Reno, wrote that he would graduate from the Davidson Academy that month and was exploring his options after high school; Xconomy’s book review also states that he graduated from Davidson. The page of Dragonfly Energy’s podcast presents him as having gone straight into his career after high school, without college or graduate school, and NPR’s TED Radio Hour states that he has no college degree, has never published a peer-reviewed article and is self-taught.⁠[13][12][9][8]

The list of the second class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, published on June 12, 2012, named 20 fellows and listed him as 18 and from Texarkana, Arkansas. The list describes him as the youngest person in history to create nuclear fusion, who had since built the lowest-cost and lowest-dose active interrogation system for detecting enriched uranium; as a Thiel Fellow he would work on counter-terrorism and on producing medical isotopes for diagnosing and treating cancer. The program then gave each fellow, aged 20 or younger, $100,000 over two years. TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry likewise calls the system the “lowest-cost and lowest-dose active interrogation system” ever developed.⁠[27][28]

Xconomy writes that after graduating from Davidson he received the two-year fellowship in 2012, a program founded by the PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry co-founder Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry. National Geographic wrote in 2014 that as a Thiel Fellow he would concentrate on building a business to bring some of his inventions to market; he called it a huge decision, acknowledged that missing the social side of college had been hard and said, “I’ve had to work hard to create my own community,” which he did by visiting high school friends and engaging with people at conferences.⁠[12][5]

An article in Arkansas Business (undated on the page) states that, at 18, he was named to the Energy category of Forbes’s “30 Under 30,” that he was then engineering a small neutron-generating device and a plutonium detector for inspecting cargo containers, and that he had received a Thiel Fellowship that year.⁠[1]

In February 2013 he gave the 12-minute-39-second talk “My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors” at TED2013. TED’s description states that, at 19, he presented an innovative design for small modular fission reactors that could be the next big step toward solving the global energy crisis, and that he had won backing to create a company to realize it. The RSA Conference profile states that he has developed a new class of nuclear power reactors intended to provide low-cost, clean energy with fewer of the safety problems of current nuclear power.⁠[20][15]

On his personal website he writes that at Easter 2013 he first located the crash site of the SR-71A Blackbird 61-7965, which went down in the desert of northeastern Nevada on a night training flight on October 25, 1967; what drew him included a report that two pieces of debris showed elevated radioactivity, and the aircraft’s astro-inertial guidance system contained a small carbon-14 tracking source. At the site he found scattered titanium, some still bearing black copper oxide paint, engine components, cockpit avionics and instrument displays, large tire and wheel sections, wiring and hoses, with component serial numbers and manufacturer marks tying the parts to the aircraft; he writes that recovery teams had filled in the large crater seen in the accident report photo, that bulldozing marks are still evident and that he believes the entire airframe lies on and below the ground there. He thanks Peter Merlin for help with the search.⁠[29]

Tom Clynes’s profile for National Geographic’s Innovators Project was published on April 15, 2014; it states that in mid-March he had returned from the TED conference in Vancouver, that he had by then given three TED talks and that he first spoke at TED at 17. He says that he prepared the previous year’s talk in advance and that it “came off a little stilted,” and that this time “I went back to the way I handled my first TED talk: I winged it.”⁠[5]

The article states that at 19 he was developing ways to use subatomic particles against cancer and nuclear terrorism and for energy, and that his scientific pursuits had taken him to the White House and around the world; one photo caption shows him in his garage in Reno, and another states that the reactor he built at 14 now sits in his lab at the University of Nevada, Reno. His early mentor Stephen Younger, a nuclear security expert, says, “the kinds of things that most people think are impossible, Taylor just goes out and does”; the page introducing Tom Clynes’s book describes Younger as a former head of nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.⁠[5][4]

In the article he says that his science began as fun for himself and became a responsibility once he realized his potential to change the world: “So now I’m doing things for bigger reasons.” He says that labels such as “boy genius” bothered him, “I always tried to shunt off those labels,” but believes young people have an advantage in invention: “Kids sometimes have an advantage when it comes to invention. Their lack of experience can actually be a benefit.” He says, “Hopefully I’ll never have to grow up too much.”⁠[5]

The International Atomic Energy Agency introduces Wilson, a 21-year-old nuclear physicist from Arkansas in the United States, as a keynote speaker at the opening session of its 2015 Scientific Forum, “Atoms in Industry. Radiation Technology for Development.” In the interview he says that public fear of radioactivity comes largely from misunderstanding, that nuclear medicine saves countless lives every year, that radiation processing can replace environmentally harmful chemicals and that nuclear power can significantly cut carbon emissions from electricity production; he works on making nuclear power safer, cheaper and smaller, including safe plants built in a factory, and envisions uses in distributed power, water desalination, chemical processing and spaceflight.⁠[6]

In the IAEA interview he also says that physics can be used to shorten the half-lives of radioactive waste and eliminate weapons-usable fissile material, calling such technologies “passively safe and secure”; he urges young people, especially girls, to pursue science and engineering, saying they need visible role models and open labs; and he calls outer space his “final frontier,” pointing to the plutonium-238 power source of the New Horizons probe to Pluto and arguing that nuclear power can take exploration beyond what chemical fuels allow.⁠[6]

On NPR’s TED Radio Hour, in a show that the host, Guy Raz, introduced as “Amateur Hour,” he introduces himself as a 21-year-old applied nuclear physicist and says that at about ten “the spark hit me”; the program says that he picked up parts from Home DepotThe Home DepotThe Home Depot, Inc. is an American home improvement retailer, the world’s largest by net sales for fiscal 2025, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.Open the full entry, and he says that parts also came from industry and government laboratories. The program states that he was then developing a small modular fission reactor, which the host describes as twice as efficient and able to power up to 100,000 homes without the pollution of fossil fuels, and he thinks fusion energy is about 20 years away. He says, “I’ve never let someone telling me no stop me, so to speak.”⁠[8]

Tom Clynes, a contributing editor of Popular Science, made him the subject of the biography The Boy Who Played with Fusion, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2015. The book’s description says that it tells his extraordinary story and explores the challenges facing gifted children, their parents and educators, the burgeoning world of amateur science and the ways the education system shortchanges gifted students.⁠[4][30][3]

National Geographic published an interview with Clynes on July 26, 2015. Clynes says he met Wilson while his own life was falling apart in a messy divorce; Wilson and his father took him to an abandoned uranium mine in the Virginia Mountains north of Reno to collect ore, which Wilson later made into yellowcake in his garage, a trip that Popular Science places when Wilson was 16 and did not yet have a driver’s license. The interview relates that Wilson’s Geiger counter showed his pant legs were radioactive and that he took the pants off, saying, “It’s not loose contamination, so it makes me think it’s been on the pants for a while.” Clynes also says that as a teenager Wilson went through a narcissistic phase, as many teenagers do, but an extreme one that caused serious problems for him, his family and others, and that he now runs a business in nuclear security and medical isotopes while working as a science communicator and mentor.⁠[3][2]

Xconomy’s review, published on August 16, 2016, states that at 22 he was tinkering in the lab, doing “nuclear tourism,” talking with Hollywood producers about a television show not yet defined and continuing his public speaking to promote science; it adds that the book hints many times at, without fully exploring, tension between him and his brother Joey, who is also gifted but seemed to come second in terms of support.⁠[12]

The profile that The NewNow published on September 14, 2018, describes him as a nuclear physicist, science advocate and inventor who has led research in energy production and storage, robotics, materials science and biology; it states that he directs several interdisciplinary nuclear science laboratories, that he founded Prometheus Industries, a company focused on science-driven research and development and the commercialization of advanced technologies, that he is involved in defense, space exploration and science policy in the United States and abroad, that he does science outreach through outlets such as TED and NOVA, and that as a correspondent on HBO’s VICE he has hosted documentaries on dark matter, the search for extraterrestrial life and conflict in space.⁠[30]

An article of the University of Nevada, Reno, published on December 21, 2022, describes him as a Davidson Academy alumnus who later worked in the lab of Ron Phaneuf, by then Emeritus Foundation Professor of physics. Phaneuf says, “While he was a student at the Davidson Academy, Taylor Wilson did so on a very small scale in my lab.” Wilson says that reaching scientific breakeven has been difficult and compares the National Ignition Facility result to a “Wright flyer moment.” A photo in the article, taken about a decade earlier, shows him holding the first Livermore laser fusion experiment chamber.⁠[22]

On January 11, 2023, the Davidson Academy announced that the alumnus, now a nuclear physicist, had been interviewed on IndyMatters, the podcast of The Nevada Independent; in the interview he says that the Davidson Academy let him feed his interest in science without being tied down by other subjects, claims Reno as his home and describes Nevada as a great setting to study nuclear science and nuclear energy. The headnote that Popular Science added when it updated its 2012 profile in 2023 states that he was then 28 and a nuclear physicist who had collaborated with multiple U.S. agencies on developing reactors and defense technology.⁠[31][2]

On May 15, 2024, Dragonfly Energy’s podcast, The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, published an interview with him. The episode summary presents him as 29, with more than 15 years of studying and practicing nuclear physics, a former Davidson Academy student who was given a laboratory in the physics department of the University of Nevada, Reno, and now working on the commercialization of nuclear energy and on nuclear security, counter-terrorism and non-proliferation, and the page links to his personal website. In the interview he describes work including small modular reactors that can be built in factories, the detection of nuclear material in cargo containers, a government-contracted robotics project to clean up a uranium enrichment facility, and fundamental research in physics, chemistry, radiation biology, medicine and materials science; he says that since about 2012 energy has been the biggest focus of his time.⁠[9]

On the program he says that many of his projects start from a new idea of his own or address an issue he sees as pressing; he first demonstrates that he can do something and then builds a team around it, splitting his time between academic science and applied, commercial work. He believes the future belongs to small modular reactors built in factories, as airliners are, with the same design, the same license and the same quality assurance process for each, and describes a molten-salt-cooled reactor of about 150 to 200 megawatts thermal producing roughly 80 to 100 megawatts of electricity, with generating costs of perhaps seven or eight cents per kilowatt-hour, possibly as low as five cents, and probably less than 20 years of operating life for the first generation; he would like to commercialize the technology and is looking for large industrial partners that know how to make heavy machinery.⁠[9]

In May 2025 he and the journalist Joey Lovato launched the science podcast Giant Leap with Taylor Wilson, which they co-host; the first episode listed on the show’s website went out on May 21, 2025, with Ellen Stofan as guest, and later guests include the astronaut Chris Hadfield, a former commander of the International Space Station, as well as Anil Seth, Clive Oppenheimer, the biologist Shane Campbell-Staton and Jacklyn Gates of Berkeley Lab, while other episodes take up subjects such as alien life and asteroids that could hit Earth. The show’s website describes Giant Leap as an effort to communicate science to younger generations in an accessible and entertaining format, gives “Est. 2024” and a copyright line of Giant Leap LLC, and also introduces the radio maker Fil Corbitt.⁠[7][32][33]

The show’s website describes him as a nuclear physicist based in Reno and a science policy advocate who has given several TED talks and hosted science documentaries, including for VICE on HBO.⁠[33]

On June 12, 2025, KNPR’s program State of Nevada, of Nevada Public Radio, published an interview with him. The accompanying article describes him, at 31, as a Reno-based nuclear physicist who founded the nuclear technology company Prometheus Industries and serves as a nuclear physicist for the Wilson Laboratory for Radiation Physics; it adds that he developed a low-cost system for producing medical isotopes, that in 2012 he presented innovative strategies for detecting nuclear material to Barack Obama, and that he has been featured by TEDx, NBCNBCNBC (National Broadcasting Company) is an American national commercial broadcast television network. It was founded by RCA in 1926, began as a radio network and later developed television. With ABC and CBS it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it passed to General Electric with RCA in 1986, merged with Universal to form NBCUniversal in 2004, has been controlled by Comcast since 2011, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry News and The Guardian.⁠[7]

The article states that he is studying radiation for medical applications by going out into the Nevada desert; he says that organisms that withstand extreme radiation might help protect astronauts in outer space or even cancer patients. He thinks fusion power will be more accessible “Maybe 15 or 20 years down the road,” with researchers “starting to develop the tools, techniques and technologies to really make it safer”; he hopes that listeners from a high schooler just becoming interested in science to someone with a Ph.D. in the field will learn something new from the podcast, and says, “I don’t think I’ll ever run out of questions.”⁠[7]

Mental Floss writes that as a teenager he was scared of roller coasters and reluctant to get a driver’s license, and that he avoids driving.⁠[11]

In the National Geographic interview Tom Clynes says that meeting him changed how he views parenting, for instance in seeing that children can and should be their parents’ mentors and that parents must be able to take risks; Clynes says, “Gifted kids need support,” and that Wilson’s parents gave him his wings.⁠[3]

Helena’s website carries his profile in its members section; Helena describes itself as a new type of institution that runs projects to address critical societal problems. The profile describes him as an inventor, scientist and entrepreneur who has founded several companies to commercialize his inventions, among them a radiation detector costing only hundreds of dollars where conventional detectors cost hundreds of thousands, used in ports and containers around the world; it states that he has spoken at TED (twice), NATONATONATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is an alliance founded on the North Atlantic Treaty signed in 1949, with collective defence as its core principle. Its political and administrative centre is in Brussels, Belgium.Open the full entry, presidential libraries, the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 under the Charter of the United Nations. It has 193 Member States, and its headquarters are in New York City.Open the full entry, Google and SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry, and a photo caption on the page shows him speaking at the Halifax Forum; he has been featured on 60 Minutes and was included, alongside Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry, in the energy segment of VICE on HBO.⁠[18]

Helena’s profile states that many stories, including a Popular Science article that later became a book, were written about his breakthrough, and that after a Hollywood bidding war FOX Studios/Chernin bought the rights to his story to adapt into a feature film, which Jeff Nichols is writing and directing. The NewNow wrote in 2018 that the untitled biopic was in development at 20th Century Fox, to be directed by Jeff Nichols.⁠[18][30]

Personal website: https://www.sciradioactive.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34][21][9]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Taylor_Wilson (opens in a new window).⁠[35][30]

University of Nevada, Reno: Official website: https://www.unr.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Davidson Academy: Official website: https://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[36]

Helena: Official website: https://helena.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Giant Leap Podcast: Official website: https://www.giantleappodcast.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]