One pretty obvious example is Murray Gell-Mann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
who was the PhD advisor of Kenneth G. Wilson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_G._Wilson

Originally Posted by Bostonian
... The book he mentions reading in junior high school to "learn the basic principle of calculus", "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and Newman, is available as an inexpensive Dover reprint and has received good reviews on Amazon.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1982/wilson-bio.html

Originally Posted by Wilson Bio
... I learned the basic principle of calculus from Mathematics and Imagination by Kasner and Newman, and went of to work through a calculus text, until I got stuck in a chapter on involutes and evolutes. ...

What are "involutes and evolutes"?

A potential list of "famous accelerants" is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies