Edison has a very famous saying: “Genius is only 1% natural talent, 99% is hard work” to affirm the importance of hard work in the journey towards success. The truth of this statement is undeniable, but there are “exceptions” that do occur, as in the case of William James Sidis.
William James Sidis was once considered a legend when at age 6 months he was able to clearly state the name of a complex element such as ‘aluminum’, at 8 months he specified that the Moon was a satellite of the Earth, at 18 months he read the New York Times. All this seems extremely hard for many people to believe, but the world is full of similar miracles and miracles that appeared with William James Sidis.
William’s father , Boris Sidis (SN 1867), was a Ukrainian of Jewish descent who immigrated to the United States in 1887 at the age of 20 to escape political persecution. Boris later became an elite professor of psychology, doctor of medicine and doctor of philosophy. William’s mother, Dr. Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis (SN 1874), graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1897. Sarah moved with her family to America to escape the massacres in 1889 at the age of 15. Boris and Sarah met in America and immediately fell in love. They married and gave birth to William in 1898.
Inheriting the dominant gene from his parents , William has displayed higher intelligence and IQ than his peers since birth . While the other children were still crying for food, William was learning to talk. By the time the children learned to talk, William was able to hold the New York Times and read aloud.
At the time, William’s father Boris was studying his theory of early childhood education. So he began conducting special experiments and targeted education for William. William did not attend school, but received all of his home education under the guidance of his parents. Boris enabled William to start learning Latin at age 2, self-taught Greek at age 3, and by age 4 the boy was fluent in Greek, English, French and Latin.
William displayed intelligence from an early age. At age 6, William began teaching himself logic, language, and anatomy. At the age of 7 he entered Harvard Medical School with excellent results. However, being too young and not keen on medicine, William did not enroll to study.
At age 8, William went on to pass the MIT entrance exam. At that time he was self-taught and was fluent in a total of 8 languages (Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian). He even invented a new language called Vendergood .
At the age of 9, William passed the Harvard University general admissions test. At the age of 10, he was able to correct errors in the manuscript of a logic professor at Harvard University. At the age of 11, William officially entered Harvard and began to study advanced mathematics and celestial motion. He mastered the knowledge to the point that he opened his own lecture internship at the Harvard Math Club and lectured on the structure and concept of four-dimensional objects for Harvard students to research together. At age 11, William became a student at Harvard University.
At the age of 17, William was known around the world as an absolute genius. While his peers were still struggling in high school and preoccupied with going to college, William graduated and was held as a lecturer at Harvard University. However, after being physically threatened by a group of Harvard students, his parents soon got William a job at the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature and the Arts (now known as the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Arts and Letters Rice University) in Houston, Texas as an assistant math teacher. Here, William participated in teaching 3 main classes: Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry and trigonometry.
Though considered a “once in a thousand years” genius , his time at Harvard changed William’s life. In addition to natural talent, many people believe that much of William’s “genius” is due to his father Boris’ strict upbringing and training.
Under his father’s restraint and academic duress, William suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder from an early age and became extremely sensitive to time. For example, when William went to eat in a restaurant, once the service time was even a minute behind the scheduled time, the genie constantly looked at his watch and looked around in a puzzled manner, slamming the table with an extremely flustered expression on her face.
And this obsessive-compulsive disorder accompanied William throughout his life. While teaching at Harvard, William was always striving for perfection and was deeply disappointed when what William considered the right teaching method didn’t work at the time. Combined with the intimidation, William resigned as a Harvard lecturer after only a year of teaching.
After that, William continued to “butt his head” at school. In 1916, the then 18-year-old William transferred to law school but a year before graduation he was arrested for participating in a protest and eventually had to give up his law degree.
William openly proclaimed his personal pacifism but was criticized, even Boris sent William to a nursing home in hopes of using his educational method to change his identity. He also threatened that if William didn’t comply, he would send him to a mental hospital. The family method of education helped William become a genius, but at the same time it pushed William into tragedy.
As a result, William temporarily had to compromise and no longer pursue his political views. But at the same time, he also didn’t want to continue being his father’s “sole experiment,” so he gave up his illustrious career, shunned his parents, and earned his living by menial jobs. In 1944, this brilliant young genius died of a stroke at the age of 46.
Even today, debates surrounding the William family’s parenting methods still receive a lot of attention. Most criticized the method of education of William’s parents because they believed that young children should go to school and have daily experiences in order to develop at their best, both physically and psychologically. Most psychologists believe that intelligence is hereditary and are aiming for the abolition of early childhood education at home.
The series of difficulties that William encountered while studying and teaching at Harvard University shows the difficulty of child prodigies when they are forced to adapt too soon to the social environment, leading to the lack of the most common skills.
