"He was from the outset a remarkable student, already alert and well formed, and always at a slight angle to the groups he was in," recalls Schmidt.
A remarkable student of natural history, Rafinesque believed that each variety of a species is a "deviant," which, through reproduction, may become a permanent species; thus, he anticipated, to some extent, part of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
In 2007 Katie Smythe, a ballet teacher working out of her native Memphis, was driving her most remarkable student, Charles Riley, across the Mississippi to a lecture-demonstration in Arkansas.
"Rachel was the most remarkable student I ever had," Joyce Moser, who taught Hall in a seminar on literature and the arts her first year at Stanford, said.
A recent lesson he gave on English grammar was remarkable – students sat forward in their wooden chairs, eagerly raising their hands.
The brilliant French astronomer, philosopher, and priest Pierre Gassendi devoted himself to an ambitious attempt to reconcile Epicureanism and Christianity, and one of his most remarkable students, the playwright Molière, undertook to produce a verse translation of "De Rerum Natura" (which does not, unfortunately, survive).
"I am committed to engaging in dialogue with appropriate colleagues at Wheaton toward the goal of reaching reconciliation so that I may continue to live out my vocation as a Christian scholar and teacher with my faculty colleagues and my remarkable students".
She called Bard College and reached an officer in a program designed to smooth entry for students like her. "I have three remarkable students," Meyerson told the Bard officer.
MARGARET HO, Pasadena, Calif., e-mail Thank you for writing about these two remarkable students.
"I have three remarkable students," Ms. Meyerson told the Bard officer.
Despite conditions seemingly unconducive to higher learning, teachers say the inmates are remarkable students, curious, focused, hungry to learn.
