Who is Jackson Oswalt, Tennessee Teen who became the youngest person to achieve Nuclear Fusion?

Team Udayavani, Oct 10, 2020, 3:24 PM IST

Jackson Oswalt from Tennessee, US, has become the world’s youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion at the age of 12.

Hours before his 13th birthday, Oswalt fused together two deuterium atoms using a fusor he had built in the playroom of his family home. Oswalt was inspired by Taylor Wilson, who was the previous record-holder, according to Guinness World Records.

He learned about Taylor Wilson, a self-taught nuclear physicist, who also achieved nuclear fusion at a young age.

This ultimately inspired him to attempt to build a fusor himself, but Jackson clarified that he was the only person to have any involvement in its design or production.

Jackson said, “The start of the process was just learning about what other people had done with their fusion reactors,”

“After that, I assembled a list of parts I needed. I got those parts off eBay primarily and then oftentimes the parts that I managed to scrounge off of eBay weren’t exactly what I needed. So I’d have to modify them to be able to do what I needed to do for my project,” he added

He has been waiting for three years for confirmation that he broke a Guinness World record when he made a working nuclear fusion reactor at the age of twelve.

Now, at 15 years old, Jackson no longer conducts experiments that often, as he’s decided to look for his “next best thing”.