A very complex topic. Either this is happiness for a person and parents, or some kind of punishment and a burden. Opinion about this is always divided almost in half. She half says that the boy's childhood and, in fact, his whole life were ruined, and the other half says that he was very lucky. We do not yet know what will happen to this boy, but there have already been similar cases in history.
William James Sideis was the most famous prodigy of the early 20th century. He became the youngest student in Harvard history - the boy was only 11 years old. And since then, he could not step without the attention of annoying reporters. It was said about him that at the age of 6 he knew eight languages, and his IQ reached a fantastic 250-300 points. But the world did not wait for great discoveries from Saidis: in search of solitude, the young man was forced to hide from the press, working in low-paid positions.
The boy was born into a family of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. His father Boris Saidis fled from political persecution to New York in 1886. He graduated from Harvard University and taught psychology there. Born on April 1, 1898, their son Boris and Sarah Sidis were named after his godfather, the American philosopher William James.
The sphere of scientific interests of Saidis Sr. was psychopathology. As soon as William learned to speak, he became the object of his father's experiments. From an early age, Boris taught his son to write and read, and at 1.5 years old, the baby could already read The New York Times.
By the age of two and a half, William was able to type on a typewriter in English and French
At the age of five, the boy could reproduce from memory all the hours of the departure of trains in directions in a complex railway schedule.
At the age of nine, William developed a logarithmic number system with base 12 instead of decimal. The proud father wrote about his son's achievements in scientific journals. In 1911, Philistine and Genius was published, in which Sidis criticized the American education system, citing his son's abilities as an illustration of the benefits of homeschooling.
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At the time of publication of the book, William was already well known in the United States. At the age of six, his parents sent the boy to a public school in Brooklyn, and William learned seven years of the school curriculum in six months, attracting the attention of major Boston newspapers.
When he finished high school almost as quickly, reporters began harassing him. But William Sideis got real publicity when he entered Harvard University at the age of nine.
The management did not consider it possible to admit him to classes at such a small age and agreed to accept him only two years later, in the expectation that the boy would have matured enough. At the age of 11, Sidis was “ripe” enough to give a lecture on four-dimensional space at the Harvard Mathematical Club.
Sixteen-year-old William James Sideis, 1914.
William's story was on the front pages of all national newspapers. Journalists vied with each other to predict great discoveries that the child prodigy would make, and debated the topic of sociogenetism and biogenetism. Participants in numerous discussions were divided into two camps: some believed that Saidis got an outstanding mind by nature, others - that this was the merit of his father, whose innovative methods of upbringing from an early age taught the boy to think energetically. Hundreds of newspaper articles published between 1910 and 1912, using the example of Saidis, proved that public free schools are a waste of time that does the child more harm than good.
Many feared for the boy's mental and physical health, some condemned his father for having deprived the child of his childhood. An article "Popular Misconceptions About Early Childhood Development," published in Science in 1910, expressed fears that, using Saidis's example, other parents would start raising their own geniuses and traumatize their children.
If Sidis Sr. deprived William of his childhood, then the constant discussion of his life in the press affected his health much more destructive
In 1910, the boy suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to a sanatorium. Sidis returned to Harvard withdrawn and depressed, he no longer lectured and avoided close contact with people. In the summer of 1914, the young man received a bachelor of arts degree.
The journalists did not think to ease their pressure on the unfortunate genius. During an interview with the Boston Herald, a reporter elicited 16-year-old Saidis for details of his sex life. The sensation that the child prodigy made a vow of celibacy got into The New York Times, after which all of America scoffed at Saidis's personal life.
In late 1915, Sidis began teaching mathematics at William Marsh Rice University in Houston, Texas, while working on his doctoral dissertation. No one was going to give the young scientist the desired privacy. Major newspapers on the east coast regularly wrote about his failures, sarcastically noting his bad manners, inability to deal with women and bullying from students. Frustrated, Sidis returned to Boston and entered Harvard Law School, but dropped out in his third year.
An article about Sidis in one of the magazines, April 1987.
In 1919, as fear of the red threat began to grow in the United States, William was arrested for participating in a socialist demonstration in which he carried the red flag. The young man was sentenced to 18 months in prison for inciting a mutiny, but Saidis Sr. made a deal with the prosecution, and he remained free. The arrest and the resulting surge of interest in his personal life once again severely spoiled Saidis's nerves.
Hoping to hide from public attention, he abandoned science and often moved from one city to another under different names, working as an ordinary clerk
In 1924, a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune found him in an office on Wall Street. "The 1909 prodigy now works as a calculating machine operator for $ 23 a week," the newspapers wrote of Saidis' ingloriously faded abilities.
After that, "the smartest man in the world" managed to disappear from the radar of journalists for more than ten years. He led a quiet, comfortable existence far from the spotlight and wrote novels. Saidis' main hobbies were collecting tram tickets and studying the life of one of the Native American tribes. He reacted to any questions about his brilliant past with incredible irritation. In 1927, Saidis refused to attend his father's funeral.
The fortress of anonymity that the prodigy had built around him collapsed in 1937. He had the imprudence to give his friend an interview, which formed the basis of material for the New Yorker magazine. Saidis became the hero of the cycle "Where are they now?", Dedicated to famous people who have disappeared from sight for a long time. In the article, Saidis was presented as "an overweight man with a protruding jaw, a rather thick neck and a reddish mustache", clumsy and childishly irresponsible, who cannot immediately find words to express his thoughts.
Offended to the core, Sidis filed a lawsuit against the New Yorker for invasion of privacy. The court concluded that he is a public figure, and therefore all his failures and blunders are a matter of public interest.
In July 1944, Saidis was found unconscious by a landlady in a Boston dorm room he had rented. At the age of 47, he died of a massive stroke.
Olga Kuzmenko