Have you ever wondered who is the smartest person on the planet? But surely there is such a person, or such a person could ever live. Let's talk about James Sidis, whose name is hardly familiar to you. He is not a celebrity, and therefore rarely talk about him, although he was a unique person.

Childhood and school years of William Sidis

William James Sidis was born on April 1, 1898 in New York. He was the son of Jews who emigrated from Berdichev, which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire. Today it is the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine.

James Sidis learned to write by the end of his first year of life, and by the age of 4 he had read Homer in the original. At the age of 6, he fully studied Aristotelian logic and, before he was 8 years old, wrote 4 books, including one monograph on anatomy.

At the age of 7, he passed the exam at Harvard Medical School. Before he was 9 years old, he knew 8 languages: English, Russian, French, German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, as well as another language that he invented himself. Later, William will be fluent in 40 languages and can easily switch from one to another.

At 11, he entered Harvard University and was soon lecturing at the local math club. Graduated from Harvard with honors at the age of 16.

What kind of person was William Sidis

And now a few words about the life of a child prodigy. Socially, Sidis was a completely passive person. As a young man, he stated that he did not intend to marry - he wanted to devote his life to intellectual development.

In 1919, shortly after leaving law school, he was arrested for participating in a May Day demonstration and was sentenced to one and a half years in prison. However, Sidis's father managed to convince the district attorney not to send William to jail. To heal the trauma, the parents took their son to a sanatorium and insisted that he apologize. Otherwise, they threatened to hide him in an insane asylum. Apparently, their unique system of educating genius was beginning to falter.

Sidis's adult life, relationships with people, work

In general, it must be said that William Sidis was hardly a happy man. Throughout his life, the press hounded him, savoring the stupid and ridiculous details of his personal life, and the environment, starting with Harvard comrades, did not understand and ridiculed his awkwardness and dissimilarity. Throughout his life, Sidis worked as a simple accountant, wore ordinary country clothes and quit his job as soon as his extraordinary abilities were discovered there. In an effort to live inconspicuously, he constantly hid from journalists who pursued him everywhere.

Death of William Sidis from cerebral hemorrhage

Died William Sidis from intracerebral hemorrhage in 1944 at the age of 46. Interestingly, his father died of the same disease at the age of 56. It is possible that the reason for Sidis's incredible talent was the maniacal idea of parents to grow a genius out of their son, because his father was one of the largest psychiatrists and psychologists in the United States, and it was he who is the ancestor of psychopathologies. Moreover, all his life he was engaged in the issues of hypnosis and psychotherapy.

A final thought on the fate of the most gifted person

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is William Sidis, despite his exceptional giftedness, who is often cited as an example of the fact that child prodigies cannot always achieve scientific and even personal success in adulthood. Indeed, we cannot say what landmark discoveries, studies or ideas Sidis proposed to the scientific world. Nevertheless, he deserves the title of the most gifted person in history quite rightly. Another thing is that his incredible talents practically did not serve humanity in any way.