Now aged 19, Ms Sabur has become the world's youngest university professor.

Due to take up her post at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, this month, Ms Sabur, a New Yorker of Iranian origin, has yet to add 'fluent Korean' to her curriculum vitae, reported the Times of London yesterday.

'I speak maths,' she said. 'And music.'

But she enjoys teaching, she added. 'It's something by which you can make a difference. I really feel I can help a lot of people.'

The daughter of a retired engineer mother and a television reporter father, Ms Sabur was moved from primary school to secondary school when she was just five, and started reading physics at the age of 10 at Stony Brook University in New York.

'I just wanted to know how things worked,' she said.

Her IQ was judged to be off the charts.

Ms Sabur graduated at the age of 14 and later obtained a PhD in materials science and engineering from Drexel University, Philadelphia.

Her professors said that, beyond an extraordinary mind, what made Ms Sabur special was her hunger to learn, a willingness to work hard and an emotional balance well beyond her years, a New York Times report said.

She was just shy of her 19th birthday when she was hired as a professor in the Department of Advanced Technology Fusion at Konkuk.

'It's really a great honour to be in the company of such great scientists,' Ms Sabur said.

Her achievement, which has been recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, matches that of record-holder Colin Maclaurin, a student of physicist Isaac Newton. In 1717, the 19-year-old Maclaurin was appointed a professor.

Ms Sabur has tried to put her academic excellence to good use, working on techniques that may one day help to fight cancer and Alzheimer's. Her current research efforts are focused on nanotechnology.

The history of child prodigies, however, illustrates that peaking too soon is not without its perils.

Ms Sufiah Yusof, who went to Oxford to read maths at 13, was recently found to be working as a prostitute. She was also estranged from her family. In 1979, Terence Judd, a classical concert pianist at 12, threw himself off the cliffs at Beachy Head in England. He was just 22.

Ms Sabur, however, seems more grounded, according to The Times.

Her parents 'encouraged me in anything I wanted to do', she said.

'We believe it is a gift from God,' she added.