William James Sidis. He is considered to be one of the smartest people on record. He had an estimated IQ between 250 and 300. The range of a person considered normal is between 90 and 110.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Childhood and Youth
- 2 Achievements and feats
- 3 Politics and arrest
- 4 Death
- 2 Sidis method
- 3 Sources
Biographical synthesis
Childhood and Youth
Born on 1 of April of 1898 , in the city of New York , the son of Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis immigrants and Boris Sidis, his parents had to flee in 1898 from Russia for political reasons. They were part of the Russian Jewish community.
His father applied his own knowledge of psychology on him, to promote high intellectual capacity. Boris Sidis is considered a pioneer in Psychopathology .
Achievements and feats
Young James could read the New York Times at the young age of 18 months, and by age eight he knew 8 languages in addition to English ( Latin , Greek , French , Russian , German , Hebrew , Turkish , and Armenian ), and by age 7 invented one, the Vendergood. At age 16 he graduated in medicine . He was able to speak about 200 languages until his death.
Politics and arrest
In 1919 , shortly after dropping out of law school, Sidis was arrested for participating in a socialist march in Boston demanding Labor Day.
The march eventually ended in riots. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison under the riot control law of 1918 , for mutiny and assault. During the trial, Sidis declared to have been a conscientious objector to World War I , and that he was an atheist and a socialist.
Death
It is believed that he died of a stroke according to popular myth on July 17 , 1944 at the age of 46, after finishing his seventh degree.
Sidis method
Sidis. The child prodigy
The debate about Sidis’s method of education occurred within a larger discussion about the best way to educate children. The newspapers criticized Boris Sidis’ way of raising his son.
Most educators of the time believed that schools should expose children to common experiences in order to create good citizens, and most psychologists believed that intelligence was hereditary, a position that opposed early education at home.
The difficulty that Sidis and other highly gifted young students encountered was a university structure with a rigid opinion against allowing them to rapidly advance to higher education. The debate on education for child prodigies continues today and Sidis remains a topic of discussion.
Within modern standards Sidis is commonly classified as a highly gifted individual, and some critics use Sidis as a vivid example of how gifted young people do not always achieve the success that would correspond, whether materially or creatively.
