EPTWilliam Sidis was born of extraordinary parents. They were Russian Jews who fled the intense anti-semitism of their native country. Upon arriving in America Boris Sidis taught himself to read and write English in four months and educated himself with a work-one-week-study-for-two policy. Initially he resisted studying for a degree but then completed the four year course in one year. His Ph.D was awarded even though he declined to submit a thesis or sit an oral exam.
Sarah Mandlebraun studied English under Boris. With her keen intelligence she went on to study medicine and was one of the few women to graduate from medical school before the turn of the century. She encouraged Boris to enrol at Harvard. They fell in love and married despite an insistence by Boris that he would never make any money.
William was born on April fools day in 1898. His parents lavished attention (of a particular kind) on him from the start and worked hard to make him brilliant. In modern parlance, he was 'hothoused'. While still in his cot Boris used letter bricks to teach William syllables. At six months he spoke his first word, "door", and a few months later was able to explain that "door opens, people come". By eighteen months he was reading the New York Times and had learnt to count. Sarah bought him an encyclopedia and her help using it was soon rejected. At three he was typing letters. He taught himself Latin, and then went on to learn Greek, Russian, French, German, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian. During his life he mastered at least forty languages and it was said he could learn a language in a day.
At six William was able to calculate on what day of the week any date would fall. One reporter was amazed to discover that he could not only quote facts from books, but also give the numbers of the pages on which those facts could be verified. He enjoyed star-gazing and map-making, and began collecting 'streetcar transfers', a hobby which became a life-long obsession and on which he later wrote what may be the most boring book ever written.
He sped through grade school, completing all seven grades in seven months, though he was not so good at maths to begin with. He took an interest at seven and even developed a set of logarithms in base twelve. He devised his own speed-reading system, wrote four books between the ages of six and eight and invented a new Esperanto-like language. By the time he was eight William had passed the Harvard Medical School anatomy examination and the entrance exam for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In high school he took six weeks to complete the four year curriculum and then worked for another six weeks as a teaching assistant. Before officially studying physics he was helping senior students with their assignments.
Withdrawn from the high school after three months William stayed at home mastering advanced mathematics. He read Einstein and may have corresponded with the great man. At eleven he enrolled as a 'special student' at Harvard and at twelve delivered a lecture on 'four-dimensional bodies' to the Harvard Mathematical Club. By now the press was onto him and reported a severe bout of flu as a nervous breakdown. His interests were wide and included politics, mathematics, languages, astronomy, anatomy and transport systems. He wrote a political constitution for a utopian society and ordered his personal life with a set of 154 rules, which included celibacy.
A cousin said of him that he never played games but was always reading. He was "a genius, and to be a genius you have to do a lot of work". This seriousness and brilliance, together with social ineptitude, led to persecution at Harvard, bolstered by strong anti-semitic feeling. His grades were not brilliant and he graduated 'cum laude' rather than 'magna cum laude', thus incurring the wrath of his mother.
In 1915 he secured a position as professor of mathematics at the Rice Institute where he was surrounded by brilliant minds. He was teased and reduced to ineffectiveness by students older than him and increasingly became a social misfit. He joined the socialist party, strongly expressed pacifist views and was asked to leave after eight months.
Enrolling at Harvard Law School he took a greater interest in politics, veering to the left of the socialist party. Some on the left favoured revolution and this incurred the displeasure of people at large. William claimed exemption from the draft as a conscientious objector and escaped prison only because World War I ended. His mother was again shocked when he left law school before graduating.
For a time he worked as a laboratory assistant but resigned in disgust upon discovering that he was working to a military agenda. He was imprisoned for being prominent in a protest march that turned into a riot and was rescued from eighteen months hard-labour by his father. William later considered this redemption to be an 'abduction'.
In 1925 his book 'The Animate and the Inanimate' was published. This was a scientific work in which William predicted black holes years before anyone else. The work was totally ignored and William never again published a book in his own name.
'Escaping' from his parents he worked first as a Russian interpreter and then in a number of positions operating adding machines for low wages. Always he hid his genius from his employer and left when it was discovered. The press continued to hound him and he objected to those who felt that he owed them a debt just because he was a genius. His isolation and eccentricity increased.
His high intelligence cannot be doubted. To give one last example, he was fond of completing crosswords without writing the answers down until he had them all. Abraham Sterling, director of New York City's Aptitude Testing Institute, said that "he easily had an I.Q. between 250 and 300. I have never heard of the existence of anybody with such an I.Q. I would honestly say that he was the most prodigious intellect of our entire generation".
At the age of 46 William James Sidis, possibly the world's greatest mind ever, suffered a serious stroke and died. History hardly remembers him.
What went wrong? Why did this monster mind apparently achieve so little? The potential was there. Reading through the details of William's life (in Amy Wallace's book, 'The Prodigy', published by Macmillan) a few things become very clear. William was a reluctant genius. In his early years he delighted in his gifts and abilities, but he lived in a goldfish bowl with the world watching his every move. His father made the serious mistake of setting him on a pedestal as an example of how children should be educated, attributing his high I.Q. to education. The critics were there, many just waiting for him to fail. The press love to find fault with those in the public eye; it sells newspapers. Princess Diana was a recent victim of the tyranny of the press, but she was not the first and will not be the last. William Sidis was denied privacy and the freedom to live his life in the way he wanted and withdrew into his shell. The world was thus denied the potentially huge benefits of a very powerful mind.
But does society have the right to say to the individual "You must perform for us"? William Sidis did his own thing. He used his great mind in his esoteric streetcar transfer hobby and in the writing of a revisionist history of the American people. We do not tell artists that they must decorate public buildings so that everyone can benefit from their talents. Nor do we expect composers to dedicate themselves to the most popular styles so that the greatest number of people will enjoy their work. Genius does not work like that. In fact, genius may be smothered if we attempt to harness and steer it in a desirable direction. At an individual level most people have experienced 'moments of brilliance' when they have least expected them. In fact, the harder we try to be clever the less likely we are to excel. Brilliance is not available on prescription.
In 1987 Britain experienced 'the great storm' in which millions of trees were uprooted. Some areas were cleared and carefully replanted, with only limited success. Other areas were left untouched and nature has taken its course. These areas are regenerating wonderfully. Let us not forget that minds are also nature's products.
Should we leave our best minds to develop without intervention? Probably not. Very few of intellectual history's great minds have arrived at greatness without active encouragement and even some pushing. But it is the height of arrogance to believe that we can produce genius to order. We should be there for the great minds when they need our support, pushing them oh so gently. And we must protect them from the awful pressures that genius can incur. Of utmost importance, we must remember that the mind belongs to the individual and not to society (and certainly not to parents and teachers). There is the risk that our efforts will be in vain, but the risk of suffocating a great mind may be far greater.
