By Wendy Owen, The Oregonian

June 05, 2010, 12:09AM

Yale Fan, who will attend Harvard University in the fall, has already made a name for himself in the world of quantum computing. The Catlin Gabel student will graduate at the top of his class June 12. By the time he was 13, Yale Fan was fascinated with quantum computing.

Before long, he was giving presentations on quantum algorithms to graduate students at Portland State University, studying math using Reed College curricula and taking a Stanford University course online.

When he was 15, he was named a 2007 Davidson Fellow Laureate, which is awarded to students under 18 who have completed a significant piece of research. He was one of five students in the United States to receive the scholarship. That year, his research paper, "A Generalization of the Deutsch-Jozsa Algorithm to Multi-Valued Quantum Logic," was accepted and presented to an international symposium in Norway.

This year, Fan placed second in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and was named to the U.S. Physics Team, one of 20 students in the nation.

So it's really no surprise that Fan will graduate at the top of his class at Catlin Gabel School on June 12.

Exceedingly humble and polite, Fan, 18, doesn't like to talk about his accomplishments and he's not out to prove himself. He simply loves physics and math.

He believes they will eventually help him find the answers to questions about life and the world.

Reached in Maryland on Memorial Day, Fan was finishing his training as part of the 2010 U.S. Physics Team before flying back to his Beaverton home. He spent a week listening to lectures, solving physics problems and working in a laboratory. He was not among the five students selected to compete in Croatia.

"This is a competition," Fan said. "But I don't really look at it that way. I'm just here to learn."

His specialty is quantum computing, which uses the physics of atomic and sub-atomic particles to create the building blocks of super-fast computers. Instead of simple computational "bits," a quantum computer would use "qubits" to solve complex tasks such as breaking cryptographic codes.

Merek Perkowski, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Portland State University, has known Fan since the then-13-year-old boy came to him with questions about quantum computing.

"He has a real love of science in his heart," Perkowski said. "He is not doing his research for fame or to please his parents."

In a recommendation letter, Perkowski wrote, "Yale has demonstrated exemplary scholarship at an astonishing stage of his life."

His mother, Jian Wang, a librarian at Portland State University, and his father, Jinsheng "Jim" Fan, a computer specialist at a Tualatin company, no longer understand their son's complicated algorithms and other physics work.

An only child, he showed talent as a toddler, his mother said. Before he could talk, he drew pictures of the places they visited during the day, such as a park.

"Books were his favorite toys," Wang said. When he wasn't reading them, he chewed on them.

Wang said she didn't enroll him in extra classes or push him into music or sports.

"We let him grow naturally," she said. "We gave him a lot of encouragement and support."

And he found his own niche, playing tennis, playing the piano and playing with physics.

Fan said he remembers wondering about life when he was 7 years old: "Why do I exist and why does the universe exist and what can I do in life to find answers to these questions?"

Later, he sought out philosophy for the answers but it was, well, too philosophical. He wanted something physical, something measurable.

"I realized physics can find answers to those questions but in a more quantitative way," he said.

He talks about "fun" in-depth physics computations like other people chatted about episodes of "Lost."

"I am currently engaged by a problem in statistical mechanics that spawned, of all places, from my work on adiabatic quantum computation," he wrote in his biography for the physics team.

Fan will be attending Harvard University in the fall, which recently brought him recognition on a Yale Alumni Magazine blog. It's hard to ignore the fact that a teenager named Yale Fan will be attending rival Harvard.

Yale blogger Mark Alden Branch asked Fan why he chose Harvard and printed his reply, noting: "Fan is as diplomatic as he is brilliant: he writes that he is a 'genuine Yale fan' and 'you probably won't see me at the Harvard-Yale football game because I wouldn't know where to sit.'"

Fan later said that he chose Harvard because it offered the right mix of programs, but he agonized over his decision.

Meanwhile, Fan still hasn't found the answer to why he or the universe exist, but he said he would be satisfied if he simply makes "a contribution to theoretical physics in some way."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1330299&forum_id=1#15169429)