William Sidis - The Smartest Man Ever

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From NPR

Long before the Tiger Mom phenomenon, a man named Boris Sidis was touting稱頌 his child-rearing methods養兒育女方法 back around 1910. His son was William James Sidis. And to those who knew of him, he was quite possibly the smartest man who ever lived.

A few months ago, an inscribed copy題字贈與 of a book Sidis wrote, called "The Animate and the Inanimate," was sold in London to an anonymous 匿名的collector for almost $8,000. The book is about the existence of black holes黑洞. It was written more than half a century before Stephen Hawking wrote about the same topic.

Now, back in 1937, The New Yorker magazine tracked Sidis down and wrote an account of his life.

One snowy January evening in 1910, about a hundred professors and advanced students of mathematics from Harvard University gathered in a lecture hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to listen to a speaker by the name of William James Sidis.

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He had never addressed an audience before, and he was abashed and a little awkward at the start. His listeners had to attend closely, for he spoke in a small voice that did not carry well. The speaker wore black, velvet knickers黑絲絨燈籠褲. He was 11 years old.

Ms. AMY WALLACE (Biographer): Probably, his voice hadn't changed, and they were agog興奮的.

RAZ: That's Amy Wallace. She wrote a biography about that speaker, William James Sidis. He was presenting a paper called "Four-dimensional Bodies," explaining complex shapes and concepts most of the audience had never even heard of.

Ms. WALLACE: He staggered茫然地 the scientific community of Harvard.

RAZ: So how did 11-year-old William James Sidis end up lecturing to Harvard's brightest minds? Amy Wallace says it was probably a combination of nature and nurture.天生與後天的

Ms. WALLACE: Well, they say he has the highest IQ ever.

RAZ: It was thought to be a hundred points一百分 higher than Einstein's. Sidis' parents were pretty smart too. His dad, Boris Sidis, was a famous psychologist. His mom was a doctor.

Ms. WALLACE: They believed that you could make a genius.

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RAZ: His mom put books and maps and even a little globe in his nursery. By the time he was 18 months, he could read The New York Times紐約時報.

Ms. WALLACE: At 4, he was speaking Latin. He was writing a novel. He wrote poetry詩詞 in French. He wrote a constitution for a utopia烏托邦憲章, invented his own language.

So one thing that was very unusual about William compared to other child prodigies, very few prodigies天才 have multiple abilities like this.

RAZ: And by the time he was 9?

Ms. WALLACE: By the time he was 9, he was ready for Harvard.

RAZ: But Harvard wanted Sidis to wait until he was 11, which is when he was first unveiled at that Harvard lecture. Five years later, he graduated cum laude 優等(請參考補充資料註釋)

at the age of 16.

But during his time at school, Sidis came to despise厭惡 the attention he got as one of the youngest students in Harvard's history.

Ms. WALLACE: He admitted that he'd never kissed a girl. And he was teased and chased. All he wanted was to get away from academia學術圈, be a regular working man.

RAZ: So Sidis went into hiding. He moved from city to city, job to job, often using an alias化名 假名. But all the while, he wrote.

(Soundbite of music)

RAZ: He wrote a 1,200-page book on the history of the United States. He wrote a book on street car transfer tickets轉車車票, which he loved to collect, and he published his books under at least eight pseudonyms假名.

Ms. WALLACE: We probably will never know how many books he published under false names.

RAZ: Sidis lived pretty successfully out of the limelight離群索居 遠離鎂光燈 until that article in 1937.

Ms. WALLACE: Finally, when he was 44 years old...

RAZ: He was befriended by a woman in Boston.

Ms. WALLACE: He invited her for a cup of coffee in his apartment, and she queried him about his life.

RAZ: But the woman was sent there by The New Yorker for a profile專訪. It was the same article that described Sidis' Harvard lecture.

Unidentified Woman: William James Sidis lives today in a hall bedroom of Boston's shabby 簡陋的South End.

Ms. WALLACE: And it was humiliating. They made fun of him. They made him sound crazy. They accused him of having a nervous breakdown精神崩潰, which he never had. And Sidis decided to come out of the woodwork and out of hiding 現身不再躲藏and sued The New Yorker.

RAZ: He sued The New Yorker for libel誹謗, and he won. But after the victory...

Ms. WALLACE: Almost immediately after, that incredible brain exploded. He had a brain hemorrhage, and he died.

RAZ: At the age of 46, William James Sidis died. His many books were never widely published, at least not under his real name. It's the reason many people today have never even heard of him.

Do you think that, were he alive today, he would be diagnosed with a social disorder? 社交焦慮症

Ms. WALLACE: Well, Sidis would have probably been referred to as having what's known as Asperger Syndrome亞斯伯格症候群: very bright about your field but kind of rigid socially. And people who knew him adored him. He was a fantastic friend, a mensch門施 and a wonderful guy. So, you know, I think he really went from being completely traumatized受傷害 as a young boy to becoming a happy man.

RAZ: That's Amy Wallace. She's a biographer of child prodigy William James Sidis. She spoke to us from her home in Los Angeles.

補充說明

The Art Of The Mensch
A mensch literally means "a person" in Yiddish, but figuratively it means something much deeper.  A mensch is a person with whom you would be happy to befriend and associate with, because you feel genuine in a mensch's presence. A mensch is a highly evolved human being. Menschlichkeit (the art of the mensch) has nothing to do with looks, with wealth, with success or with intellect. A mensch exudes a certain magnetism that attracts us, whether or not words or glances are exchanged. A person is a mensch because he simply makes others feel good.

Many institutes confer three levels of Latin honors, although some eschew the third, namely:

• cum laude, meaning "with honor"
• magna cum laude, meaning "with great honor"
• summa cum laude, meaning "with highest honor"