Meet James Corson: The ‘Jeopardy!’ Champion is a Nuclear Engineer & Has Competed Against Ken Jennings

James Corson is currently a two-day champion on Jeopardy! He competed against Harvey Silikovitz, who garnered social media attention for being a worldwide karaoke singer. He faced off against two new contestants on Wednesday after beating Silikovitz in Tuesday’s game.

Corson, 39, told The Frederick News Post, his local newspaper in Fredrick, Maryland, that being on the game show was a “dream come true.” He first applied for Jeopardy! 12 years ago but never heard back. When Corson didn’t hear back right away, his wife, Holly, encouraged him to keep taking Jeopardy!‘s anytime test, which includes 50 trivia questions, every year. It is the first step to applying to the show and can only be taken once a year. Corson got the call to be on the show in June 2024 and had to retake the test over Zoom. Then, in December, he received another call back confirming his selection, and then filmed his episodes in January. Holly and a few of his friends were there to cheer him on.

“It felt pretty amazing, but also kind of a little bittersweet, because I accomplished my dream,” he told the outlet. Corson has always been a fan of the show and watched it with his family growing up. The game show contestant said that he has always been a fan of trivia and would play Trivial Pursuit and other games with his family.

Corson is a nuclear engineer for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Maryland and opened up about what categories he would be good at. “I’m a nuclear engineer, so if it’s anything nuclear physics related, I’m gonna destroy that, but otherwise, I’m pretty good at geography and history categories,” he said.

To put his knowledge to the test, Corson joined an online trivia league called LearnedLeague. He told the outlet that previous Jeopardy! players James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings have also participated in the league. Jennings holds the record for most consecutive Jeopardy! games won, while Holzhauer holds the record for most money won in a single episode with $131,127.

“The one cool thing about LearnedLeague is it tracks all your stats over time, so I can see my question percentage going up and up and up,” Corson told the outlet. “It’s a good thing that Jeopardy! didn’t call me in 2012 or whatever because I didn’t know nearly as much back then.”

“One of the biggest reasons I’ve gotten much better at trivia is just that I read a lot, and I read too much to buy all these books myself,” he shared. Corson uses his town’s public library to take out books on topics that he is unfamiliar with. His wife shared that he usually takes out children’s versions of books because he can get all of the information he needs on a topic in 50 pages rather than 300.

James and Holly had attended tapings of Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right in the past and said that the Jeopardy! set was more serious. “In the audience, you had to be quiet,” Holly said. “Don’t say a word, absolutely no photos. Someone tried to take a picture [on their phone] and then they made them delete it and then go into their trash and delete it again.”

Since being on the game show, the couple still attends weekly trivia nights at a local brewery. Corson said that he doesn’t win all of the time, especially when the questions are geared toward pop culture. He told the Frederick News Post that those categories are his wife’s specialty.

See Corson compete in his third-straight game on Thursday, March 13, against two new opponents.