Daniel Lightwing

Lightwing started to gain more fame in China from 2016 onwards, particularly on the website Zhihu, where his articles written in Chinese, covering a broad range of topics had attracted over 170,000 followers within one year.

Lightwing grew up in the Lake District, and Warthill, York, England. In 2015, he described that, before the age of nine, he "had no particular attraction to mathematics. I learnt to read very young, before attending primary school. And I did read all kinds of things—books aimed at children 5–10 years older. At primary school, I read the entire library."

His time with Google, however, changed his opinion about workplace socialising. In 2015, he admitted that he had "a problem with office culture," adding that he sometimes wants "to join in with other people," but is too shy, and doesn't know what to say when it isn't work-related.

He attended the University of Cambridge where he received a Master of Arts degree in mathematics in 2009, as well as Peking University where he studied computational linguistics. He previously attended York College and St Peter's School, a public school in York.

Lightwing's life story was presented in two films. In 2007, the British television documentary Beautiful Young Minds was broadcast by BBC Two, and described his medal-winning competition at the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), as well as his connections with China. In 2014, the British dramatic film X+Y (released in the United States as A Brilliant Young Mind), starring Asa Butterfield as Nathan Ellis, a character based on Lightwing, was released and portrayed Lightwing's experiences before and during the IMO competition.

Daniel James Lightwing is a co-founder of the London-based Internet/Gambling business Castella Research, which uses high-frequency trading inspired methods to place bets on sports exchanges. He was previously a web backend developer for the London offices of Google. In 2006, he represented the United Kingdom at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he won a silver medal. His experience at the IMO was described in the 2007 BBC Two British television documentary, Beautiful Young Minds, and the 2014 British dramatic film, X+Y (released in the United States as A Brilliant Young Mind).

His interest in mathematics led him to being recruited as a member of the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) team where he represented the United Kingdom and won a silver medal in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

At home, his mother, Carolyn, who was a maths and science teacher, had researched Asperger Syndrome (AS) when he was 16 years of age after reading the 2003 mystery novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and, later, took him to a diagnostic consultation with University of Cambridge autism researcher and Professor Simon Baron-Cohen FBA who diagnosed Daniel with AS. Parts of the consultation were included in the 2007 BBC Two British television documentary, Beautiful Young Minds.