William James Sidis, the smartest man in the world, the son of Jewish-Russian emigrants, was born in New York on April 1, 1898.
William was a child prodigy with an amazing mind and an IQ of 300. He was literally a human computer and a living dictionary.
William J. Sidis never had a childhood and didn't like being a little boy.
Imagine for a moment an 18 month old child who can incredibly read The New York Times.
At the age of eight, he was fluent in French, German, Russian, Turkish, Armenian, Latin and his native language, English.
When he was only 9 years old, he was successfully admitted to Harvard University. Let's dive a little deeper and imagine this same little kid, at the age of 9, inventing a completely new language called “vendergood”, learned by linguists and declared complete, correct and fun.
At the age of twelve, he gave his first lecture on the fourth dimension to the scientific community and the press.
Because William was very smart, great things were expected of him, and a bright future awaited him.
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His parents, a famous Russian psychologist and one of the first female doctors of that time, had a very clear goal in mind: to educate a genius. They educated his mind and completely forgot the most important thing: his heart and his feelings.
William showed a strong willingness and patience to learn, but his constant public and media presence traumatized him and he began to rebel against everything in his complex and artificial life.
He had serious emotional problems that he could never solve. His body was found in a small apartment in Boston in 1944. He was 46 years old and died of a stroke.
“I want to live a perfect life. The only way to live a perfect life is to be alone. I've always hated the crowd."