mcdspot

I hate to quote from any work by William Dembski, but in this case I must. This is the story of William James Sidis, one of the most intelligent people in modern history. Dembski provides a tantalizing story:

William James Sidis (1898-1944) is by some regarded as the most intellectually gifted person who ever lived. His IQ is estimated to have been between 250 and 300. At eighteen months he could read the New York Times. At two he taught himself Latin. At three he learned Greek. At four he was typing letters in French and English. At five he wrote a treatise on anatomy and stunned people with his mathematical ability. At eight he graduated from Brookline High School. He was about to enter
Harvard, but the entrance board suggested he take a few years off to develop socially. So he entered Harvard at eleven. At sixteen he graduated cum laude. He became the youngest professor in history. He inferred the possibility of black holes twenty years before Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar did. As an adult, he could speak more than forty languages and dialects.

Yet the stress of possessing such an amazing intellect took its toll on Sidis. Instead of being appreciated and admired for his intellectual gifts, he was regarded as a freak—an intellectual performer to be stared at rather than a fellow human being to be cherished. As a teenager at Harvard, he
suffered a nervous breakdown. As a professor at Rice University, he was unable to bear the constant media attention. In his early twenties, he resigned his professorship and withdrew from all serious intellectual pursuits. In 1924, a reporter found him working a low-paying job at a Wall Street office. Sidis told the reporter that all he wanted was anonymity and a job that placed no demands on him. Sidis spent the rest of his life working menial jobs.