Sorry, Colin Maclaurin!
Alia Sabur is the world’s youngest college professor, beating a record set 300+ years ago by Colin Maclaurin. She was hired for her first professorship 3 days shy of her 19th birthday. In the time leading up to the start of her new position, she taught in New Orleans, at Southern University, an HBCU that is still struggling after hurricane Katrina. So, she’s smart and generous!
The wiki page on Colin Macluarin, the previous record-holder is pretty funny - after defending a master’s thesis entitled The Power of Gravity, he went on to study divinity, which naturally lead to a professorship in mathematics when he was 19.
Of course, he had an edge on Alia - he had 300 years less knowledge to learn! On the other hand, what does studying gravity look like when you personally know Isaac Newton?