In a similar vein, Bruce Wasserstein seems like much more of a prodigy.
Wasserstein was the pre-eminent investment banker of his generation. He graduated from the University of Michigan at age 19. Wasserstein entered Harvard Law School at the age of nineteen, ultimately graduating cum laude as one of the first students to receive a joint MBA/JD degree and garnering honors as a Baker Scholar with high distinction from HBS. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1971 and later studied at Cambridge University in England as a Knox Traveling Fellow, earning a graduate diploma in Comparative Legal Studies in Economic Regulation.
After graduation, Wasserstein began working at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. He quickly left law practice to join the mergers and acquisitions department at The First Boston Corporation. When I met him, I believe he was co-head of investment banking there and, with Joe Perella, built it up to a major force. In 1988, he formed his own investment banking firm, Wasserstein Perella Group and served as its CEO until the company was sold to Dresdner Bank in 2001. He was named chairman at the newly formed Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein before he moved to Lazard in 2002. He then took Lazard private in a complex transaction.