The Story of the Smartest Man Alive and Why You’ve Never Heard of Him

Albert Einstein had an estimated IQ of 160. Issac Newton’s was around 190 and Mark Zuckerberg’s was estimated at 152. The three are known as geniuses the world over, but they don’t even come close to what is considered the highest IQ in history and that was between 250 and 300. The owner of this enviable intelligence was William James Sidis, an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical skills, who mastered several dialects, and published several books.

Today the awesome.club brings some details of the life of William James Sidis and sheds light on why he is not as well known as he should be.

William was born in New York City in 1898. His father, Boris, was a brilliant psychologist and psychiatrist with four degrees from Harvard and his mother was a medical degree. Both were very intelligent people, which created a great deal of expectation regarding William’s intelligence. In the first years of the boy’s life, his parents realized that all expectations had been exceeded.

Boris Sidis, William’s father

William was only 18 months old when he was able to read the book for the first time. The New York Times🇧🇷 At age 8, he learned Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian. In addition to the eight languages, he invented his own language and called it “Vendergood”.

Realizing his son’s intelligence, Boris tried to enroll him at Harvard, but the boy was refused because he was only 9 years old. Two years later, the university accepted him and he became the youngest person ever to be admitted to the university (this was in 1909). In 1910, his knowledge of mathematics reached such a high level that he began teaching his teachers and became known as a “child prodigy”. He graduated at the age of 16.

Fame can be very tiring, especially when it starts very early. Shortly after graduation, William declared to some reporters that he would like to live a “perfect” life, which, for him, was only possible in isolation. He also added that he would never marry because women didn’t attract him.

The decisions he made regarding his life were also a consequence of the enormous pressure he suffered from a very young age. At that time, the United States believed in the possibility of transforming children into prodigies through correct education. William’s father didn’t deny that he was always interested in turning his son into a star. For this, he put into practice his own psychological theories and put a lot of pressure on his son. As a child, William liked to learn, but his opinion changed as an adult and he began to blame his father for everything that happened to him. When Boris died in 1923, William refused to attend the funeral.

Normally, geniuses like to keep a low-key life, so William has always sought administrative and low-paying jobs. But still he was recognized, which forced him to change jobs. In 1924, reporters discovered that William was paid $23 a week and he was back in the newspaper headlines. But this time people started to make fun of his lack of intelligence, as if he was no longer able to do what he did as a child, which was not true, because throughout his life, he wrote several important books, but always using different aliases.

William was a socialist and opposed the First World War. He was arrested in 1919 while participating in a violent protest in Boston and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The parents found a way to prevent this from happening and locked him up in a sanatorium for two years.

William never had much money and was always very lonely. Estranged from his family, he worked as a machine operator and did small jobs to survive. The man who could have changed the world died at age 46 of a brain hemorrhage in 1944. Interestingly, his father had died the same way in 1923. There is some controversy surrounding his IQ (intelligence quotient), which some experts claimed was if the greatest in history.

What did you think of William’s story? Have you ever heard of an IQ of over 250?