Matthew Kilgore’s brown eyes are focused on the computer screen, where numbers are flashing by quicker than a blink.
To a bystander, it looks likes garble coming across the machine, but to 20-year-old Kilgore, it makes sense.
“It’s a sequence,” he says while his eyes remain fixed on the computer in his Upper Macungie Township home. “We know what the first five numbers are, and we’re trying to find the sixth number.”
Kilgore will graduate Monday from Lehigh University with bachelor’s degrees in math and computer science and a master’s degree in math. So it’s no surprise that in the fall he will pursue his doctorate at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he will work on research and equations as he has at home.
His achievements would be outstanding for any student, but Kilgore, who started college at age 16, always had to work a littler harder than his peers.
Kilgore was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that has no cure and causes progressive muscle degeneration. He’s in a wheelchair and has trouble moving his arms. His voice is strained and quiet, so he uses a voice enhancer with a microphone to help people better understand him.
But Kilgore shrugs off his disabilities when talking about his achievements.
“Certainly it has been a challenge,” he said. “However, my field in particular is purely based on thinking, so physical disabilities have not been a factor.”
Kilgore dreamed at a young age of attending MIT. He was homeschooled by his mother, Brita Kilgore, who said she’s always set the bar high for him and her other son, Dan, a freshman studying engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Kilgore’s father, Rich Kilgore, is also an engineer.
In the foyer of their house, on a wall decorated with studio portraits of the two boys growing up, is a child’s drawing of a wheelchair. Matthew Kilgore did it when he was 9 years old using colored pencils, and his mother framed it.
Art didn’t come as naturally to him as math. When Kilgore was 12 years old, he joined a high school math team headed by Lehigh University math professor Don Davis. At 14, he started taking classes at Lehigh. And at 16, he enrolled full time for math and computer science classes and was eventually selected to be in the Eckardt Scholars Program, a high honors curriculum at the school.
When he’s not dealing with numbers, Kilgore enjoys watching “The Daily Show” on television and “Arrested Development” on Netflix. He also likes playing competitive video games. But if he had to choose how to spend his free time, it would be with a textbook in front of him.
“It’s his bad habit,” his mother jokingly said.
Kilgore did have a few illnesses while at Lehigh, Brita Kilgore said, including a few surgical procedures that were scheduled during school breaks. Every day he has respiratory and physical therapy, even with stacks of papers to complete and mounds of books to read.
But “if at all possible, Matt went to class,” she said. “I don’t think he ever missed more than one or two days a semester. “Through all of his challenges, Matthew never once complained.”
Kilgore won’t be attending the graduation ceremony Monday because it’s difficult for him to move in crowded spaces. But he will fondly remember Lehigh, he said. The school was helpful with his disability, such as by scheduling most of his classes on the first floors of buildings.
Davis, who was a teacher and mentor to him during his time at Lehigh, had much praise for his student.
In an advanced graduate math course, Davis recalled, he gave the students a question that stumped even him. But not Kilgore. He worked it out.
“He’s just at another level,” Davis said. “I’ve been here for 41 years and he’s possibly the best math student we’ve had here in 41 years.”
Kilgore and Davis meet once a week and they were together when Kilgore received notification that he was accepted to MIT.
The news came with a phone call from MIT professor Charles Leiserson, a prominent computer scientist who wrote “Introduction to Algorithms,” which Kilgore had read years before.
He’ll study under Leiserson and hopes to work in the research division of a tech company such as Microsoft.
Kilgore will spend his summer working on research, and packing for the move to Cambridge, Mass. His mother will also move to Cambridge to help him.
Brita Kilgore thought back to when she was taking her 14-year-old son to Calculus III classes at Lehigh. Back then, she thought, “I can’t believe this.”
“Matthew has always exceeded my expectations,” she said. “And I have very high expectations.”
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