William James Sidis (April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. Events 527 - Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne Year 1898 ( MDCCCXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Events 180 - Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians Year 1944 ( MCMXLIV) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the List of child prodigies|Fictional child prodigies A child prodigy is a one who masters one or more skills or arts at an early age He first became famous for his precociousness, and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from the public eye. In popular usage eccentricity refers to unusual or odd Behavior on the part of an individual He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonyms. With an estimated IQ of 250-300^{[1] [2]} , he is considered one of the most intelligent people who ever lived. An Intelligence Quotient or IQ is a score derived from one of several different Standardized tests attempting to measure Intelligence.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Parents and upbringing (1898–1909) 1.2 Harvard and college life (1909–1915) 1.3 Teaching and further education (1915-1919) 1.4 Politics and arrest (1919–1921) 1.5 Later life (1921–1944) 1.6 Remembrances 2 Publications and subjects of research 3 Sidis in educational discussions 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

Biography

Parents and upbringing (1898–1909)

William James Sidis was born to Russian Jewish immigrants on April 1, 1898 in New York City. Immigration refers to the movement of people among countries While the movement of people has existed throughout human history at various levels modern immigration implies long-term Events 527 - Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne Year 1898 ( MDCCCXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common The City of New York His father, Boris Sidis, Ph. Boris Sidis PhD MD ( October 12, 1867 - October 24, 1923) was a Russian Jewish Psychologist, Physician D. , M. D. , had emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution. His mother, Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M. D. , and her family had fled the pogroms about 1889. A pogrom is a form of Riot directed against a particular group whether ethnic religious or other and characterized by destruction of their Homes Businesses Sarah attended Boston University and graduated from its School of Medicine in 1897. ^[3] William was named after his godfather, Boris's friend and colleague, the psychologist William James. For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation William James (January 11 1842 – August 26 1910 was a pioneering Boris earned his degrees at Harvard University, and taught psychology there. Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and He was a psychiatrist, and published numerous books and articles, performing pioneering work in abnormal psychology. A psychiatrist (also archaically called an alienist) is a Physician who specializes in Psychiatry and is certified in treating Mental disorders Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of Mental illness or mental distress or the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative Boris was a polyglot and his son William would become one too at a young age.

Instead of the more common disciplinary approach to education, Sidis's parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, for which they were criticized. Nevertheless, the young Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months,^[4] taught himself eight languages (Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish, and Armenian) by age eight, and invented another, which he called Vendergood. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Turkish ( tr Türkçe IPA) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. The Armenian language (hy հայերեն լեզու hajɛɹɛn lɛzu —, conventional short form) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian Vendergood was a constructed language, the invention of the Child prodigy William James Sidis. The New York Times described Sidis as "a wonderfully successful result of a scientific forcing experiment". ^[5]

Harvard and college life (1909–1915)

Although the university had previously refused to let his father enroll him at age nine because he was still a child, Sidis set a record in 1909 by becoming the youngest person to enroll at Harvard College. Harvard College is the undergraduate section and oldest school of Harvard University, a Private university in the United States founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts He was 11 years old, and entered Harvard as part of a program to enroll gifted students early. The experimental group included mathematician Norbert Wiener, Richard Buckminster Fuller, and composer Roger Sessions. Norbert Wiener ( November 26, 1894, Columbia Missouri – March 18, 1964, Stockholm, Sweden) was an American Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller ( July 12, 1895 &ndash July 1, 1983) was an American Architect, Author Roger Huntington Sessions ( 28 December 1896 &ndash 16 March 1985) was an American Composer, critic and teacher of music In early 1910, his mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies,^[6] prompting MIT professor Daniel F. In Physics and Mathematics, a sequence of n numbers can be understood as a location in an n -dimensional space Comstock to predict that Sidis would become a great mathematician and a leader in that science in the future. ^[7] Sidis began taking a full-time course load in 1910 and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, on June 18, 1914, at age 16. Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an Academic degree was earned Events 618 - Coronation of the Chinese governor Li Yuan as Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the new Emperor of China, initiating three centuries Year 1914 ( MCMXIV) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year ^[8]

Shortly after graduation, he told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion. He granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald, which published his vows to remain celibate and never to marry, and a statement that women did not appeal to him (however, he later developed a strong affection for a young woman named Martha Foley^[9]). The Boston Herald is a Tabloid -format Daily newspaper, the smaller of the two big dailies in Boston Massachusetts, United States He later enrolled at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Teaching and further education (1915-1919)

After a gang of Harvard students threatened to beat him up, his parents secured him a job at the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art (now the William Marsh Rice University) in Houston, Texas as a mathematics teaching assistant. William Marsh Rice University (commonly called Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters Science and Art He arrived at Rice in December 1915 at age 17. He was a Graduate Fellow working towards his doctorate.

Sidis taught three classes: Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, and trigonometry (he wrote a textbook for the Euclidean geometry course in Greek). Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to the Greek Mathematician Euclid of Alexandria. In mathematics non-Euclidean geometry describes how this all works--> hyperbolic and Elliptic geometry, which are contrasted with Euclidean geometry Circle-trig6svg|300px|thumb|right|All of the Trigonometric functions of an angle θ can be constructed geometrically in terms of a unit circle centered at O. After less than a year, frustrated with the department, his teaching requirements, and his treatment by students older than him, Sidis left his post and returned to New England. History See also History of New England New England's earliest inhabitants were Algonquian -speaking Native Americans including the When a friend later asked him why he had left, he replied, "I never knew why they gave me the job in the first place — I'm not much of a teacher. I didn't leave — I was asked to go. " Sidis abandoned his pursuit of a graduate degree in mathematics and enrolled at the Harvard Law School in September 1916, but withdrew in good standing in his final year in March 1919. Harvard Law School (also known as Harvard Law or HLS) is one of the professional Graduate schools of Harvard University. ^[10]

Politics and arrest (1919–1921)

In 1919, shortly after his withdrawal from law school, Sidis was arrested for participating in a socialist May Day parade in Boston that turned into a scuffle. May Day occurs on May 1 and refers to any of several Public holidays In many countries May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour He was sentenced to 18 months in prison under the Sedition Act of 1918 for rioting and assault. A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned and usually deprived of a range of The Sedition Act of 1918 was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who was concerned that dissent Sidis's arrest featured prominently in newspapers, as his early graduation from Harvard had garnered considerable local celebrity. During the trial, Sidis stated that he had been a conscientious objector of the World War I draft, did not believe in a god, and that he was a socialist^[11] (though he later favored a quasi-libertarian system that he invented). A conscientious objector (CO is an individual who on religious moral or ethical grounds refuses to participate as a combatant in war or in some cases to take any role that would support World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All God, as a male Deity, contrasts with female deities or " goddesses " Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the Means of production and distribution Libertarianism is a term used by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which prioritize individual Liberty and seek to minimize or even abolish the His father made an arrangement with the district attorney to keep him out of prison before his appeal came to trial; his parents, instead, held him in their sanitorium in New Hampshire for a year, then took him to California where he spent another year. A sanatorium (also sanitorium, sanitarium) is a medical facility for long-term illness typically Tuberculosis. ^[12] While at the sanitorium, his parents set about "reforming" him and threatened him with transfer to an insane asylum. A psychiatric hospital (previously called insane asylum, mental hospital; or derogatorily looney bin, nut house or Funny Farm) is ^[13][14]

Later life (1921–1944)

After escaping back to the East Coast in 1921, Sidis was determined to live an independent and private life, and would only take work running adding machines or other fairly menial tasks. The East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard" or "Atlantic Seaboard" refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern See Adding machine (disambiguation for other uses of this term He worked in New York City and became estranged from his parents. It took a number of years before he was cleared to return to Massachusetts, and he remained concerned of possible arrest for years. ^[15] He devoted himself to his hobby of collecting streetcar transfers, published periodicals, and taught small circles of interested friends his version of American history. A tram, tramcar, trolley, trolley car, or streetcar is a railborne vehicle, of lighter weight and construction than a Train Magazines, periodicals or serials are Publications generally published on a regular schedule containing a variety of articles, generally

In 1944, Sidis won a settlement from The New Yorker for publishing an article about him in 1937, which he alleged contained many false statements. The New Yorker is an American Magazine that publishes reportage commentary criticism essays fiction satire cartoons and poetry ^[16] Under the title "Where Are They Now?", the pseudonymous article described Sidis's life as lonely, in a "hall bedroom in Boston's shabby South End". ^[17] Lower courts had dismissed Sidis as a public figure with no right to challenge personal publicity. Public figure is a legal term applied in the context of Defamation actions ( Libel and Slander) as well as Invasion of privacy. He lost an appeal of an invasion of privacy lawsuit at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1940 over the same article. Privacy law is the area of law concerning the protection and preservation of the Privacy rights of individuals The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Judge Charles Edward Clark expressed sympathy for Sidis — who claimed that the publication had exposed him to "public scorn, ridicule, and contempt" and caused him "grievous mental anguish [and] humiliation" — but found that the court was not disposed to "afford to all the intimate details of private life an absolute immunity from the prying of the press". Charles Edward Clark ( December 9, 1889 - December 13, 1963) was a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ^[18]

Sidis died in 1944 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 46. A cerebral hemorrhage (or intracerebral hemorrhage, ICH) is a subtype of Intracranial hemorrhage that occurs within the Brain tissue itself ^[19] His father had died of the same malady in 1923 at age 56.

Remembrances

Abraham Sperling, director of New York City's Aptitude Testing Institute, said after Sidis' death that according to his calculations, Sidis "easily had an IQ between 250 and 300" and that there was no evidence that his intellect had declined in adulthood. ^[20][21] (His father once dismissed tests of intelligence as "silly, pedantic, absurd, and grossly misleading. "^[22]) Sperling commented: "What the journalists did not report, and perhaps did not know, was that during all the years of his obscure employments he was writing original treatises on history, government, economics and political affairs. In a visit to his mother's home I was permitted to see the contents of a trunkful of original manuscript material that Bill Sidis composed (Psychology for the Millions). " From writings on astrophysics, to Native American studies, to a comprehensive and definitive taxonomy of vehicle transfers, an equally comprehensive study of civil engineering and vehicles, and several well-substantiated lost texts on anthropology, philology and transportation systems, Sidis covered a broad range of subjects.

Publications and subjects of research

Aside from mathematics, subjects on which Sidis wrote or lectured included cosmology, psychology, and Native American history. Physical cosmology, as a branch of Astronomy, is the study of the large-scale structure of the Universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and For indigenous peoples in the United States other than Hawaii and Alaska see also Native Americans in the United States. Some of his ideas concerned cosmological reversibility, social continuity and libertarian rights. For articles on other forms of reversibility including reversibility of microscopic dynamics see Reversibility (disambiguation. Libertarianism is a term used by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which prioritize individual Liberty and seek to minimize or even abolish the

In The Animate and the Inanimate (1925), Sidis predicted the existence of regions of space where the second law of thermodynamics operated in reverse to the temporal direction that we experience in our local area. The second law of Thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing Entropy, stating that the entropy of an Isolated system which Everything outside of what we would today call a galaxy would be such a region. A galaxy is a massive gravitationally bound system consisting of Stars an Interstellar medium of gas and dust, and Dark matter Sidis claimed that the matter in this region would not generate light. (These dark areas of the universe are not properly dark matter or black holes as they are used in contemporary cosmology. In Physics and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical Matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic force but whose presence can be inferred from A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the Gravitational field is so powerful that nothing not even Electromagnetic radiation (e ) This work on cosmology, based on his theory of reversibility of the second law of thermodynamics was the only book published under his name. ^[23]

Sidis' The Tribes and the States (ca. 1935) employs the pseudonym "John W. A pseudonym is a fictitious alternative to a person's legal name (see Alias) Shattuck," giving a 100,000-year history of North America's inhabitants, from prehistoric times to 1828. Stone Age Paleolithic See also Paleolithic, Recent African Origin, Early Homo sapiens, Early human migrations "Paleolithic" ^[24] In this text, he suggests that "there were red men at one time in Europe as well as in America. "^[25]

Sidis was also a "peridromophile," a term he coined for people fascinated with transportation research and streetcar systems. A railfan or rail buff ( American English) railway enthusiast or railway buff ( Australian / British English) or (often A tram, tramcar, trolley, trolley car, or streetcar is a railborne vehicle, of lighter weight and construction than a Train He wrote a treatise on streetcar transfers under the pseudonym of "Frank Folupa" that identified means of increasing public transport usage. ^[26]

In 1930, Sidis was awarded a patent for a rotary perpetual calendar that took into account leap years. A perpetual calendar is a Calendar which is good for a span of many years such as the Runic calendar. ^[27] Also, in his adult years, it was estimated that he could speak more than forty languages, and learn a new language in a day. ^[28]

Sidis in educational discussions

The debate about Sidis' manner of upbringing occurred within a larger discourse about the best way to educate children. Newspapers criticized the child-rearing methods of Boris Sidis. Parenting is the process of raising and educating a Child from birth, or before until Adulthood In the case of humans it is usually Most educators of the day believed that schools should expose children to common experiences to create good citizens, and most psychologists thought that intelligence was hereditary — a position that precluded early childhood education at home. ^[29]

The difficulties that Sidis and other highly gifted young students encountered in dealing with the social structure of a university setting helped shape opinion against allowing them to rapidly advance through higher education. The debate over gifted education continues today, and Sidis remains a topic of discussion. Gifted education (also known as Gifted and Talented Education ( GATE) Talented and Gifted ( TAG) or G/T) is a broad term for special Cast in modern standards, scholars usually classify Sidis as a profoundly gifted individual, and some critics use Sidis as the most vivid example of how gifted youth do not always achieve corresponding success as adults — in either material or creative terms.

Many of these depictions rely on Sidis' negative portrayal in the press of the day, which refused to acknowledge that his intellect could be attributed to anything but monotonous cramming — precisely what his parents had argued against. "Popular press" redirects here note that the University of Wisconsin Press publishes under the imprint "The Popular Press" In fact, his mother later noted that newspaper accounts of her son bore little resemblance to William himself.

Notes

References

• LaMay, Craig L. (2003). Journalism and the Debate Over Privacy, LEA's Communication Series. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. . ISBN 9780805846263.  
• Wallace, Amy (1986). The prodigy: a biography of William James Sidis, America's greatest child prodigy. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. . ISBN 0-525-24404-2.  
• A review of "The Prodigy" by Martha Brassil
• Book review by Robert N. Seitz, Ph.D.

External links

• "Sidis Archives" website
  • Frequently Asked Questions
• Details and outline of his life
• The Rise and Fall of William J. Sidis - a brief biography
• The Newsletter of the Rice (University) Historical Society
• "Apologia Pro Sua Vita", 1924 article from Harvard newspaper
• Family Biographies by Sarah Sidis
• 'A Story of Genius'

Persondata
NAME	Sidis, William James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American prodigy
DATE OF BIRTH	April 1, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City
DATE OF DEATH	July 17, 1944
PLACE OF DEATH	Boston, Massachusetts

Events 527 - Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne Year 1898 ( MDCCCXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common The City of New York Events 180 - Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians Year 1944 ( MCMXLIV) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar.

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