His parents, who moved to the United States from the Russian Empire, came up with a unique teaching method for their son. William James Sideis (Sidis) is called the smartest man in history, however, paradoxically, he did nothing particularly outstanding for humanity.
Origin and upbringing
William Saidis was born in 1898 in the family of the scientist Boris Saidis, who came to America from the “capital of the Pale of Settlement”, the city of Berdichev (now in Ukraine). He was a student of the philosopher William James, who studied psychology at Harvard University, and in the scientific community he received the nickname "Russian revolutionary." Boris Saidis named his son after the teacher and made the child a “guinea pig” for testing new teaching methods. However, there is evidence that Boris himself was a child prodigy.
To raise William, his mother, Sarah, gave up her medical career. The boy did not play with other children or listen to fairy tales. Instead, from an early age, using his father's technique, he memorized abstract information in huge volumes. “A child is never too young to study,” said Boris Saidis. The father-psychologist began by showing the baby wooden blocks with letters, at the same time putting him into a state of hypnosis. Almost all of the family's savings went towards buying books and teaching materials for William.
The results were stunning. Already at seven months, the baby knew many words and could repeat letters. At 18 months old, he read the New York Times and knew how to write. And at the age of seven he spoke seven languages (including Russian) and in six months he mastered the entire ten-year school curriculum. At the age of 11, William Sidis became the youngest student in history, entering the university where his father worked. According to some reports, Saidis's IQ was equal to 250-300 points, which is higher than that of any other person who has ever lived on the planet. He knew 40 to 200 languages and even invented his own.
Adult prodigy
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Unlike many other "children-geniuses", Saidis did not lose his abilities and did not become an ordinary person. However, his lifestyle was not ordinary - with great potential, William did not strive to make a brilliant career. Perhaps due to the fact that his domineering father "overdone", depriving his son of the joys of childhood (later, when Boris Saidis died, William did not even come to the funeral).
Problems began to manifest themselves while studying at Harvard. After giving a lecture on four-dimensional bodies to adult students in 1910, the boy strained himself and went to bed, being in "nervous prostration." The emotional state of the prodigy who attracted everyone's attention was also undermined by the press. 16-year-old William was mocked at Harvard when the Boston Herald reported that the young man had taken a vow of celibacy. The "smartest man in the world" really treated love and sex as "the imperfections of life." As a result, having reached adulthood, the mathematics professor pulled away from the academic environment, citing "fatigue from the exact sciences" and a desire to "live in seclusion."
William Sideis made his living as an accountant, and quit as soon as his colleagues became aware of his genius. Although from time to time books under the authorship of Saidis were still published. One of them was dedicated to his unusual hobby - collecting train tickets. In everyday life, Saidis was untidy and behaved rather eccentric.
An interesting episode when, at the age of 21, William joined political radicals. Only the influence of his parents helped the young man avoid an 18-month prison sentence for organizing a communist demonstration. William Sidis took offense at the journalists who drew conclusions from the history of his life in the spirit of the catch phrase "woe from wits", and even sued The New Yorker, accusing it of invading privacy.
The scientific heritage of the former child prodigy is quite large - he wrote books and articles on the history of the American Indians, psychology and cosmology. Some of his ideas inspired subsequent authors. The "burned out genius" died in 1944 at the age of 47 - the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage.
Timur Sagdiev