The Story Of The Smartest Man In The World
He is considered to be the smartest person in the world, someone with a prodigious mind and whose IQ was between 250 and 300. William James Sidis was a human calculator and linguistic genius, someone whose incredible successes were expected. However, there is one matter that he never resolved and which prevailed early: sadness.
Imagine for a moment a child who, at 18 months, could read the New York Times . Now imagine him at 8, fluent in French, German, Russian, Turkish and Armenian, dominating Latin and of course English, his mother tongue. Let’s take this a step further and visualize this same 9-year-old child creating a language called “ vendergood ” that linguists have studied and called complete, correct and fascinating.
“I want to live a perfect life. The only way to do this is through isolation and loneliness. I have always hated multitudes. ”
-William James Sidis-
This child was William James Sidis, a child of Jewish Russian immigrants and born in New York on April 1, 1898. Much has been said and written about him, and as always in these cases, fictions have been made, exaggerated. things and we romanticized the biography of a man with the pen of the romantic and the tincture of the fantastic, whereas it is a rather raw story. But despite everything extremely interesting from a psychological point of view.
The physical testimonies and other documentaries reflect a large number of real facts. One of them is as simple as it is incredible: William James Sidis never had a childhood. He was never able to take advantage of the right to be a child, even though he was very intelligent. At age 9, he was accepted to H arvard University and on a cold night in January 1910, at age 12, he gave his first lecture on the fourth dimension in front of the scientific community and the press of so.
Her parents, a recognized Russian psychologist and one of the first medical doctors of the time, had a clear goal: they wanted a genius. They educated her mind completely forgetting the most important thing: her heart and her emotions.
William James Sidis
Genetics, predispositions and a highly facilitating environment
To know every detail of the life of what we consider to be “the smartest man in the world”, there is a book:
Both his father and mother had brilliant minds, hence the importance of the genetic factor in his superior intelligence. However, this couple’s goal when they had a child was as clear as it was controversial:
A life of laboratory and public exhibition
In addition to genetics, there is of course a facilitating environment, highly stimulating and oriented towards a very concrete end. We know that his father, Boris Sidis, used sophisticated techniques – including hypnosis – to stimulate his child’s abilities and potential at an early stage.
Her mother, for her part, stopped medicine in order, according to her, to “mold” her child and innovate in new teaching strategies. It is said that William himself, without a doubt, also showed a clear predisposition to learning. However, something always marked and traumatized him: exposure to the public and to the media.
His parents published academic reports regularly to show the little one’s progress and achievements. The press was in suspense, just like the scientific community, regarding the development of the child. We know that while studying at Harvard, he suffered in particular from daily harassment from the press. After graduating cum laude and after having astonished all the professors with his theories on the fourth dimension, he was “transported” to the University of Houston to teach mathematics, while at the same time starting his law course.
He was 16 when his mind said “stop”. He then began his peregrination towards the abyss.
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The smartest man in the world and his sad end
William did not complete his law course and no other for that matter, despite his intelligence. He was not yet 17 years old and decided to react to this academic and experimental environment in which he felt like a laboratory rat, observed with a magnifying glass and analyzed from every angle and thought. In 1919 he was arrested and thrown in jail for starting a protest and recruiting young people for a communist movement.
In view of the influence of his parents and the importance of his image, he was quickly released from prison. But, in his desire to defend himself from his parents and from society, he reoffended, provoking youth uprisings against capitalism and being particularly arrogant in the face of judges. Eventually, he was jailed for two years, finally achieving what he wanted most: solitude and seclusion.
– Albert Einstein-
Once he regained his freedom, William James Sidis changed his name. He wanted a harmless life, but he was always found by his parents or the press. He began a peregrination over the United States, where he looked for short-lived jobs and he did what he preferred: to write. He published a lot of different things under various pseudonyms. He has written books on history and others on black hole theory. According to his biographers, there could be dozens of forgotten books, behind which in reality lies the figure of William James Sidis.
William James Sidis
An early end and in loneliness
William James Sidis has never loved one woman: Martha Foley, a young Irish activist with whom he had a complex and unstable relationship. The photo of the woman is the only effect found in her clothes when, in 1944, her lifeless body was found in a small Boston apartment. He was 46 years old and died of a brain hemorrhage.
He spent his last years in court. The press only slandered him: “The child prodigy, who has achieved nothing, works as a waiter”, “The most intelligent man in the world has a miserable life”, “The genius of mathematics and linguistics has burned out ”. “William James Sidis got tired of thinking”.
We don’t know if he really got tired of thinking and even living. But, from his biographies, we can deduce that he got tired of society and this family and academic environment that had placed high expectations on his shoulders even before he was born.
He got tired of not being able to be himself and when he finally had the opportunity to be, he didn’t. He was an expert in black holes and in the fourth dimension, but the most important subject of life, that of learning and struggling for one’s own happiness, has always escaped his hands, sight and heart …
William James Sidis is still the person with the highest IQ on record to this day. Behind him is Terence Tao, who has an IQ of 225-230, a young Australian mathematician who currently teaches at the University of Los Angeles.
However, it is very possible that in one part of the world there is one or more child prodigies, not yet identified, who exceed these levels of intelligence. But, in reality, it doesn’t matter because the numbers are just numbers. The main thing in these cases is that they are allowed to have a childhood, to be children, to enjoy secure emotional ties through which they can fulfill themselves personally in what they wish, in complete freedom and without pressure. .
Because as we saw in this story, a higher intelligence is not necessarily synonymous with happiness.
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