Taylor Wilson is a 24-year-old inventor, scientist and entrepreneur. At age 14, in his home state of Arkansas, Taylor became the youngest person in history to produce nuclear fusion.
He hasn’t slowed down since. Wilson is currently working in medicine, nuclear security, chemistry, and nuclear fission.
In his reactor in his parent’s garage, he was able to reach a temperature forty times as hot as the sun. Immediately, Taylor was all over the press. Numerous stories were written about his breakthrough including a Popular Science article “The Boy Who Played With Fusion,” which subsequently became a book. After a bidding war in Hollywood, FOX Studios/Chernin bought the story rights to adapt into a feature film which Jeff Nichols (MUD), is writing and directing.
Taylor has won numerous awards including first place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and the Intel Young Scientist Award. His project, “Countering Nuclear Terrorism: Novel Active and Passive Techniques for Detecting Nuclear Threats” caught the attention of the US Government and military. He went on to develop several groundbreaking nuclear technologies with applications in security, medicine and energy. He is also the founder of several companies which commercializes these inventions. One of his earliest inventions was a radiation detector, which typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taylor’s detector costs only hundreds of dollars and is used in ports and containers around the world.
In 2012, Taylor was awarded a Peter Thiel Fellowship where he received a $100,000 grant to forgo college and focus on his inventions. He has spoken about technology, science and nuclear security around the world including twice at TED, NATO, Presidential Libraries, The United Nations, Google, SpaceX and many more. He’s been featured on 60 Minutes and was included in the energy segment on VICE ON HBO alongside Elon Musk.
Currently, Taylor is building a small nuclear fission reactor that has the potential to fundamentally disrupt the energy landscape. With a passion for the history of science and technology, Taylor’s mission is to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers to dream big and use technology to make the world a better place.