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Position:Home>General - Arts & Humanities > Tell me who William James Sidis and William Boris Sidis were?Question: Tell me who William James Sidis and William Boris Sidis were?
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william james sidis was a famous child prodigy born on april fools day, 1898. boris sidis was his father and a famous psycologist (who was a genius in his own right). william james sidis is widely regarded as the smartest human that ever lived, his iq was estimated to be around 300. he could talk 6 months and was reading homer in the original greek by the age of 3. by age 6 he had mastered 8 languages (including one of his own called Vendergood), memorized gray's anatomy in its entirety, could calculate the day any date would fall on, mastered aristotle's system of logic, and had written several books including a grammer and a plan for a utopian society. at age 8 he taught himself calculus and became an expert in advanced mathematics in a short while. at age 11, after he had wizzed by grades 1-12 in a matter of months, he was excepted to Harvard University. there he outstounded everyone by giving a lecture on 4 dimensional bodies. by 16, he had graduated with high praise (they won't let me type magna c*u*m* laude) and moved on to law school, but dropped out and went to teach mathermatics in Texas. this did not work out. later he became a communist sypathizer and marched in the may day parade. there was a riot and he was arrested (even though he didn't participate in the riots). he defended himself in the trial, quoting passages from the constution and the declaration of independence verbatim, turning the prosecutors words against them, and making them look like fools. he was still sentenced to prison but got out of it some how (sorry i don't remember the details) Disillusioned with academia and humans in general, he lived rest of his life in relative obscurity working odd jobs here and there. he wrote a book on collecting street car transfers, which was his hobby. the the new york times published an article on him in 1937 called "the April fool" or something like that. in it, the NYT basically called him a burnt out loser who accomplished nothing in his life except for writing a boring book about street car transfers. sidis sued and in a years long court battle, finally won out. the battle no doubt put much stress on him, and he developed high blood pressure, which went untreated. he died in 1944 of a cerebral hemmorage. he was only 46. for a long time after his death sidis became a poster boy for the burnt out genius who accomplished nothing. but in the 70's a guy named dan mahoney began researching sidis and found that those years he spent in obscurity were actually some of the most productive in his life. sidis wrote several books including a book on cosmology that predicted black holes 50 years before they were even thought of and a 1200 page revisionist history of the united states that will blow your mind, not to mention dozens of pamplets, essays, and newsletters. |