BROWNSVILLE — When Christopher Thomas Phillippe began reading to his mother at age 2, chapters ahead in the hardcover book she was reading to him, his parents began to suspect he might be smarter than most children.
When he later won the grand prize in the science fair two years in a row at the Episcopal Day School, “that’s when we started wondering what was happening,” his father Christopher Lee Phillippe said.
Christopher Thomas is now 15. He will graduate next month from Math and Science Academy high school at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Brownsville campus with a traditional high school diploma and 77 college credit hours.
He reads and writes Greek and Latin, tested out of French in seventh grade and speaks a little Mandarin Chinese and German.
“What I find interesting is that most people are gifted in math, or the arts, or languages, but he’s good at everything, his father said on a recent afternoon at their home in Brownsville.
Christopher Thomas plans a double major at UTRGV, a bachelor of science in biomedical research and bachelor’s of arts in philosophy. He carries a grade-point average above 4. Because it is above 3, he will receive a full-ride MSA Scholarship to UTRGV, with $500 a semester thrown in for books, he and his father said. He’s ranked 14th in his class.
Besides his classes, Christopher constantly engages in self study, his parents said.
He has been writing books since he was 3-1/2, writes his own science experiments, and is teaching himself to play the saxophone, violin, cello and guitar. He was a lead soloist under then-university of Texas at Brownsville guitar professor Michael Quantz.
He also composes, favoring Gustav Mahler from the romantic era and Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky from the modern era. He tutors his MSA classmates in statistics.
As for the double major, he said philosophy can be as exacting as hard science once one takes into consideration the philosophers’ discipline. He said he’s interested in David Hume, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
“I do lift weights,” Christopher added, showing off a well appointed weight room. Golf and tennis lessons had to be discontinued because of the pandemic.
“I couldn’t make him do this stuff,” his father said. “All he wanted was philosophy books. He’s driven.” Although he is tutored in Latin and guitar, “It’s all him. … I’m in awe.”
His mother Claudia added, “He is overall a really good kid. We have never had to make him do anything.”
She said ever since she noticed that her son was gifted, she has tried to figure out what to do with him.
“He takes nightly walks with his father and the dog,” she said. “He tells us some of the stuff he has learned, and it blows our minds.”
