Immanuel Kant was a talented boy who could build a successful academic career

One of the most interesting facts about Immanuel Kant is he was a gifted young man with the potential to have a fruitful academic career. Kant enrolled in the Pietist school run by his pastor when he was eight years old. This was a Latin school, and Kant likely developed his enduring love for the Latin classics during his eight and a half years there, particularly for the naturalistic poet Lucretius.

He enrolled as a theological student at the University of Königsberg in 1740. The university was very important to him. Kant began to establish his career while still a student. But despite taking religion classes and even giving a few sermons, his main areas of interest were physics and math. In 1744, Kant began writing his first book, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, which addressed a problem involving kinetic forces. Kant was assisted by a young professor who had studied Christian Wolff, a systematizer of rationalist philosophy and a supporter of Sir Isaac Newton's science. Although he had already decided to pursue an academic career at that point, his father's death in 1746 and his inability to secure a position as an undercut or in one of the schools affiliated with the university forced him to leave and look for a way to support himself.