An Autodidact is a person who is self-educated and who is learning by his own. 
The common belief is that that they’re exceptions while it’s absolutely not the case. We will focus in this article on the Autodidacts of science since it’s the area in which the belief of the necessity of an academic formation is more prevelant. In litterature, business or arts we are more inclined to think that the qualities required are not necessarely inherent to school. I will mention for information purposes W.Shakespare ,V.Hugo , M.Shakir as examples of autodidacts and Ikea, Zara, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Dell, IBM, LouisVittonMH, L’Oreal, Ford, Honda, Renault, CNN, Toyota as companies founded by people with no diplomas.
Since childhood, We’re obliged to go to school and We’re endoctrinated with the idea that school is the unique key to knowledge and success. It is undeed the royal way to secure a high social status. However, the inadaptability of the educational systems to different forms of intelligence causes the exlusion of many kids who are immediately categorized as stupid. My aim is not to oppose self-education to formal education since marrying the two would be a good ideal to reach but I think that the lack of Autodidacts is more related to the belief that all knowledge is taught in school and that all success is within good marks than the incapability of people to teach themselves.
The advantage of being autodidact is that you learn with your own rythm and based on your own capacities in order to quickly progress .It’s so much more easy to become an autodidact at your early ages, that’s why you will notice that autodidacts benefited either from a suitable environment or didn’t have any other option.
Bringing to light such people should make us believe that we can learn by ourselves , that we can live our passion , that we can overpass social limitations , or at least try to …
Here are some of the important autodidacts since formal education exist :
– Leonardo da Vinci (Great Polymaths)
– Alfred Nobel (Nobel Price)
– Leon Foucault (Speed of light)
Electricity
– George Ohm (Ohm’s law)
– André-Marie Ampère (Ampere’s theorem)
– Thomas Edison (Electric bulb)
– Micheal Faraday (Faraday’s law)
– Nikola Tesla (Induction motor)
– Olivier Heaviside (Complexe numbers in electricity)
– Philo Farnsworth (Image dissector)
– Charles Wheatstone (Wheatstone bridge)
Mechanics
– James Watt
– Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company)
– Willbur and Orville Wright (First powered fly)
– Graham Bell (Cell phone)
– John Harrison (Marin Chronometer)
– Soichiro Honda (Honda motors)
– Charles Babbage (Difference engine)
– Louis Renault
– Ada Lovelace (Description of the Analytic Machine ‘ancestor of the computer)
Information technology
– Bill Gate (Co-founfer Microsoft)
– Paul Allen (Co-founder Microsoft)
– Mark Zucherbeg (Facebook)
– Steve Jobs (Co- founder Apple)
– Steve Wozniack (Co-founder Apple)
– Larry Ellison (Oracle Corporation)
– Marcelo Tosatti (Linux)
– Bruell Smith (Macintosh)
– Alan Cox (Linux)
Biology,Chimestry and Medecine:
– Charles Darwin (Theory of evolution)
– Agnes Pockels
– Antonie Van Lewenhoek (Discovered Spermatozoid)
– Ambroise Paré
Mathematics
– George Boole (Boolean Algebra)
– Frederich Engel (Engel’s Theorem)
– Gottfried Leibniz
– George Green
– John Forbes Nash
– Srinivasa Ramanujan
Architecture
– Tadao Andô
– Gustave Eiffel (Eiffel’s Tower)
– Peter Behrens
– Jean Prouvé
– Michel-Ange
This list is not exhaustive. Nevertheless, I hope that It’s enough to show you that a very big part of what you’re studying through your professor was established by people who didn’t see any professor in their entire life or at least whose professor’s presence was complementary.
