William James Sidis is considered the smartest person in the world, someone with a prodigious mind, whose IQ scored between 250 and 300 points, was a human calculator and a linguistic genius, a person who had to achieve impressive achievements to be so intelligent, but there was a problem that was never solved in his life and ended up taking him out of this early world : sadness.
Imagine for a moment a girl who at 18 months old could read the New York Times, let’s imagine her now at the age of eight who speaks French, German, Russian, Turkish and Armenian fluently, masters Latin and, of course, English, her native language. Let’s go a little further and visualize this same 9-year-old by creating a new language called “vendergood”, which linguists have studied and classified as very complete, correct and fascinating.
- “I want to live a perfect life.
- The only way to do this is isolation.
- Loneliness.
- I’ve always hated the crowds.
- -William James Sidis-.
This child was William James Sidis, son of two Russian Jewish immigrants and born in New York on April 1, 1898, much has been said about him and much more has been written about his life, and as always happens in these cases, Fiction has often been mixed with reality, data has been exaggerated and a man’s biography has been romanticized with a little romance and fantasy , while what really exists is a rather cruel story. And yet extremely interesting from a psychological point of view.
The physical and documentary testimonies confirm a large number of facts, one is as simple as it is transcendental: William James Sidis never had a childhood, he never had the right to be a child, despite his intelligence, at age 9 he was accepted to the University of Harvard and on a cold January night in 1910, at the age of 12, gave his first lecture on the fourth dimension before the scientific community and the press of the time.
His parents, a renowned Russian psychologist and one of the first doctors of the time, had a very clear goal: they wanted a genius, they educated William’s mind, completely forgetting the most essential part: heart and emotions.
To know every detail of life that is considered “the smartest man in the world”, we have at our disposal the book “The Prodigy: A Biography of William James Sidis, America?”S Greatest Child Prodigy, by Amy Wallace In this biography, we are quickly eyed by the kind of education that our protagonist has received.
Both your father and mother had a brilliant mind, so the genetic factor was important during the development of this high intelligence in children, however, the purpose of this couple when a child was born was as clear as it was controversial: parents wanted to train the child’s brain to become a genius.
Undoubtedly, genetics has been added to a family environment that is facilitating, very stimulating and oriented to a specific goal. We know that his father, Boris Sidis, used sophisticated techniques – including hypnosis – to improve his son’s abilities and potentials from an early age.
Her mother, in turn, left the drugs to, she said, “mold” her and innovate with new educational strategies. It can be said that William himself undoubtedly also showed a clear willingness to learn. However, one thing has always been marked and traumatized: exposure to the public and the media.
From time to time, parents published academic reports showing the child’s accomplishments. The press was always listening, as was the scientific community. We know that when I was studying at Harvard, William was persecuted by the press. After graduating and leaving academics impressed by their performance. theories about the fourth dimension, he was taken to the University of Houston to teach mathematics while starting law school.
At the time, William was 16, when his mind simply said “enough. “Then began what he called a pilgrimage into the abyss.
William did not complete his law or any other study, although he was extremely intelligent, he was not yet 17 when he decided to respond to this academic and experimental environment, where he felt like a lab rat observed with magnifying glass and analyzed in all its aspects and in all his thinking. In 1919 he was arrested and taken to prison for starting a demonstration and recruiting youth for a communist movement.
Faced with the influence of his parents and the relevance of his image, he quickly got out of jail; however, in his efforts to defend himself against his parents and society itself, he repeated the same act by provoking youthful protests against capitalism. extremely arrogant of judges. Eventually, he was imprisoned for two years, realizing what he wanted: loneliness and isolation.
Don’t try to become a man of success, but a man of courage. -Albert Einstein-
After regaining his freedom, the first thing William J did. Sidis was changing his name. He wanted an insignificant life, but every now and then his parents or the press found him, thus starting a continuous pilgrimage through america, where he sought sporadic jobs and did what he loved: writing. He has produced numerous publications, under different pseudonyms. He has written history books and others on black hole theories. According to the authors of his biography, there may be dozens of forgotten books in which, under a false identity, the figure of William J hides. Sidis.
William James Sidis loved only one woman: Martha Foley, a young Irish activist with which she had a relationship as complex as she was unstable. The photo of the woman was the only belonging found in her clothes when in 1944 her body was found lifeless in a small apartment in Boston. He was 46 and died of a stroke.
He had spent his last years in court. The press took the opportunity to defame William: “The prodigal child who never cries while working in a shop,” “The smartest man in the world leads a miserable life,” “The genius of math and linguistics burned down,” William J was tired of thinking. Sidis.
We don’t really know if he was tired of thinking and even living, however, what can be inferred from reading his biographies is that he was fed up with society and the family and academic environment that had imposed high expectations on him even before his death. Birth.
He got tired of not being able to be himself and when he had the opportunity he did not succeed, he was a specialist in black holes and fourth dimension, but this was the most important issue of life, learning and fighting for his life. own happiness, always something that slipped into his hands, his eyes and his heart?
William James Sidis remains to this day the person with the highest IQ ever recorded. Right after him comes the young Terence Tao (pictured above) with an IQ of 225-230, a young Australian mathematician who currently teaches at the University of Los Angeles. Angels.
However, it is very likely that somewhere in this world there will be one or more child prodigies, not yet identified, who match or exceed these intelligence scores, the truth is that it doesn’t matter because the numbers are just that, numbers. The fundamental thing in these cases is to allow the child to have a childhood, which can be a child, to have safe affective bonds, in which it can be done personally in what he wants, freely and without pressure.
Because, as we have seen in this story, sometimes great intelligence is not synonymous with happiness.