The son of immigrants from Ukraine was the smartest person on Earth: what is known about him

By the age of eight, he had independently learned eight languages ​​and invented his own. At nine years old, he became the youngest student to enroll at Harvard. His IQ was higher than that of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. So who was he? The edition writes about it AdMe.ru.

We all know the names of such indisputable geniuses as Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. They did not take the IQ test, but it is believed that they had this figure equal to 160 and 190, respectively.

But there was a man in the world whose IQ was estimated at 250 to 300. His name was William James Sidis. And although he was a child prodigy and an exceptional mathematician, polyglot and gifted author, few people had heard of him. But why did he avoid fame and how did his life end? This will be discussed below.

8 languages ​​by age 8

William was born on April 1, 1898 in New York. He grew up in a family of Jewish immigrants from the city of Berdichev (Ukrainian city, at that time part of the Russian Empire).

His father, Boris, was an eminent psychologist, earning four degrees from Harvard. The mother was also a doctor of medical sciences. Since his parents were geniuses themselves, William was also expected to be a brilliant scientist. But his intelligence turned out to be too far from commonplace.

By the age of 1,5, he was reading The New York Times. And by eight - I independently learned Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian. Moreover, he invented his own language, which he called Vendergood.

When William was 9 years old, his father, aware of his son's intelligence, made an effort to enroll him at Harvard. However, he was refused due to the age of the child.

But two years later he was still accepted - in 1909, William became the youngest person to enter Harvard.

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After a year of study, by 1910, he reached such heights in the knowledge of mathematics that he himself began to lecture to his professors. Thanks to this, he deservedly earned the title of prodigy.

At the age of 16, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree.

The decision to live in seclusion

Upon graduation, William made the decision to live the "ideal life." Such for him was a life of solitude. He told reporters that he would never marry because he was not attracted to women.

Several things influenced his decision: the fame, which became burdensome, and the pressure that he faced from his birth.

At that time in America it was believed that with the right education, a child prodigy could be raised from any child. William's father, being a gifted psychologist, dreamed of making a star out of his son. To do this, he applied his own psychological methods, which involved pressure.

And although William enjoyed studying as a child, as he grew up, everything changed, and he blamed his father for it. When Boris passed away in 1923, William refused to attend his funeral.

18 months of prison

William strove to live modestly, so he worked in the low-paid position of an ordinary clerk. But people continued to recognize him, and he had no choice but to change jobs.

In 1924, the genius hit the headlines again when reporters discovered that he was making $ 23 a week. Newspapers ridiculed his mental faculties, claiming that he was no longer capable of doing what he did as a child. This was not true. William wrote many valuable books in his life, just under different pseudonyms.

He was once arrested for participating in a May Day demonstration in Boston and sentenced to 18 months in prison. During the trial, William called himself a socialist and declared that he refused the draft for the First World War for ideological reasons.

Saidis's father managed to convince the district attorney not to send William to serve his sentence. Instead, his parents put him in their mental hospital in New Hampshire for a year, and took him with them to California the following year. They began to insist that he change, otherwise they threatened to send his son to a regular psychiatric hospital.

Living all alone

William lived his life all alone. He retired from his family, worked as a machinist and handyman to make ends meet.

He died in poverty and obscurity in 1944 when he was only 46 years old. The cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. By the way, his father died of the same disease at the age of 56, in 1923.

This is how the life of a man who could change the world ended.