Being smart doesn’t always mean knowing everything about everything. It also means knowing when to use that smartness and how to put it for good use. It is choosing and trusting your brain to battle all the fight for you. William James Sidis was born in 1898 and made the headlines as a child prodigy with exceptional smartness and intellect. He graduated from Harvard University at the age of just 16. His IQ is estimated to be about 50-100 points more than that of the genius Albert Einstein. He could read the New York times at the age of 2 and knew more than 6 languages fluently. He could write and speak in Hebrew, Latin, French, English, Russian, German, Turkish and Armenian just at the age of 6 years. At 11, he took admission into the Harvard University as one of the youngest students in the history of the institute.
His father was a phycologist and his mother was a doctor. Probably their influence had a major part in Sidi’s extraordinary intellect. His mother always pushed him to learn and grasp more knowledge by spending most of her earnings on study materials like books, maps and other essential learning items. His contribution to cosmological reversibility and social continuity was remarkable. He also wrote some exceptional books one of which became very famous namely, ‘The Animate and the Inanimate.’
During his early years in Harvard, he was bullied and harassed by his seniors after which his parents got him a teaching job at William Marsh Rice Institute. While working there for a while he was disrespected by senior teachers and the students he taught since he was only 17 years old. He was also arrested once for participating in a Mayday parade in Bostan that turned violent. He had a tough life growing up and that’s why he decided to spend his adult life isolated even from his parents. He died of brain haemorrhage in 1944 at the age of 46. Even though he was traumatized as a child, he spent his adult life being happy and doing what he loved, being smart!
