Lakshmanan Meyyappan

The matter referred

The Committee on Referred Matters received the nomination in the ordinary course and confined its examination, as the Standard requires, to what could be established from the documentary record placed before it. That record consisted of a press report describing Lakshmanan Meyyappan as having qualified as a chartered accountant at the age of sixteen, and as being the youngest person in the world to have achieved the qualification.

No further particulars were before the Committee, and the Committee sought none. It is not the practice of the Institute to compile a life where the record supplies an achievement. Accordingly this entry states the age, the qualification and the distinction as reported, and states nothing else.

Why the entry was made

Article II of the Standard requires that the significance of an achievement be apparent to a reasonable person without explanation. The chartered accountancy qualification is attained, in the ordinary case, some years after the completion of secondary education and after a period of examination and practical training. An attainment of it at sixteen therefore requires no advocacy to be understood as exceptional, and the further report that no younger person in the world has attained it places the matter beyond the need for comparison.

The Committee noted that the achievement satisfies Article I in that it is a matter of record; Article III in that it is attributable to a named individual; and Article IV in that it can be stated in the register in the exact terms in which it was verified.

Note on the limits of this entry

The Institute records what was reported: the age of sixteen, the qualification as a chartered accountant, and the description of the recipient as the youngest in the world to hold it. Matters of upbringing, schooling, family, examination performance, ambition, employment or future intention form no part of this entry, were not verified, and are not asserted by the Institute in any form.