Bengaluru boy is fastest to recite periodic table without reading

A class VIII cadet of the Rashtriya Military School Bangalore made best use of the holidays during the pandemic to train and break a world record. His hard work has paid off and 13-year-old Ujjwal Sharma now is the “fastest to recite the periodic table without reading”, a feat that has entered the International Book of Records.

Ujjwal Sharma: Fastest to recite periodic table

Ujjwal sequentially named all the 118 elements of the periodic table in just 33 seconds. The earlier record stood at 35.23 seconds. His trainer Gopal Singh, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and now working in the U.S., taught Ujjwal to overcome the difficulties in remembering the names of elements. “All names have more than six letters and several names are tongue-twisters such as dysprosium, tantalum, oganesson, darmstadtium, meitnerium, and gadolinium. I learnt the whole periodic table and recited it several times in a day,” Ujjwal said.

After he was confident that he would be able to break the world record, Ujjwal uploaded his attempt on IBR website a week ago. On Saturday, after due process, he received confirmation from IBR that his feat was now a world record. “I am extremely excited and happy that I am a world record-holder now. Tears of happiness rolled down my cheeks. It was an emotional moment for my parents. I shared the happy news with my grandparents and my teachers,” Ujjwal said.

He aspires to become an astrophysicist and unravel some mysteries of the universe. His other ambition is to join the Indian Air Force as a fighter pilot and serve the country.