Miami Dade College professor, 18, breaks 306-year record

Nathan Thomas was 18 when Miami Dade College put him in front of engineering students and Guinness World Records named him the youngest male professor on record. Guinness said Thomas was 18 years and 346 days old when he set the mark, while teaching COP 2270: C for Engineers in Miami, a classroom role that is extraordinary not just for his age, but for the speed of his academic path.

Thomas did not arrive at Miami Dade College as a new student. NBC News reported that he entered a classroom there in August 2023 as a professor after already earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Miami Dade College said on its social accounts that Thomas is an MDC alumnus who returned after earning both degrees in electrical engineering with honors, making him a rare example of a student who moved from the college’s own halls back to its front of class.

That is the institutional question now hanging over the record. Miami Dade College has not just hired a prodigy, it has elevated one of its own and given that choice public weight by highlighting Thomas as the youngest male professor on record. The college’s student newspaper, The Reporter, also featured him as the youngest professor in MDC history. In a county where Miami Dade College is a major pipeline for engineering, transfer students and working adults, the decision turns one young instructor into a visible example of what the school wants to showcase about its engineering instruction.

Thomas’s career path is also unusually stacked. A LinkedIn profile for him says he is a J.D. candidate at the University of Miami School of Law, adding law school to a resume that already includes undergraduate and graduate engineering degrees. He has said the part he enjoys most is seeing a concept suddenly make sense for a student after seeming impossible moments earlier, a small but revealing detail about the kind of instructor he appears to be.

The record itself reaches deep into academic history. Multiple reports identify Scottish mathematician Colin Maclaurin as the previous holder, with the earlier benchmark dating to 1717, or roughly 306 years before Thomas’s appointment. A CBS Miami video from July 29, 2026, said Guinness described the prior record as having been set in 1746, showing that the historical footnote is not always told the same way even as Thomas’s own feat remains the same: at 18, he became the professor everyone is talking about.