This is the sad story of the smartest man in history and the reason why you have never heard of him.
Today we will talk about a man, not just an ordinary man but someone who had an IQ of 3 average people combined, having an IQ higher than the famous genius.
The famed Albert Einstein had an estimated IQ of 160. Where Isaac Newton had an estimated IQ of 190. But the man we are talking about had an IQ of 250–300.
His name is William James Sidis. You have probably never heard of him.
William was born on April 1,1898, in New York. His parents were both geniuses themselves. His mother was a doctor and his father was a psychologist who earned 4 degrees from Havard.
With intelligence running in his blood he was expected to be brilliant but his intelligence proved to be far more. He was considered a child prodigy and was destined to be one of the great mathematicians of his age.
At the age of just 18 months William was able to read the New York Times. By the time he was 2 he was already picking out sentences on a typewriter. When he was 5 he wrote a treatise on anatomy and even worked out a formula to calculate the day of any date in history.
But only a few have ever heard of him… so what happened?
William was the youngest person ever to be atmitted to Harvard in the year 1909.
He then earned his Bachelor of Arts at the age of 16. William was famous of his excellence capabilities. With his intelligence, no one imaged anything but his success. But fame can be frustrating especially for William as a young man. For him he was a household name and he hated it. Shortly after graduating, he told the newspaper reporters that he wanted to live a “perfect life”. A life that would be in seclusion and away from the crowd. He also vowed to never get married.
All he wanted was just to live a life away from the fame. Williams father knew that his son was no ordinary. So he did his best to make William shine and be recognized. Surely William enjoyed learning as a child, but as an adult, he refused to live the life his father wanted. His decision broke their relationship and got to the point that when his father passed away William didn’t even attend his funeral. In 1919 William was arrested for involving himself in a socialist May Day parade in Boston as an objector & protestor against the WW 1 draft. His mother bailed him out before his trial and held him in the sanatorium for another year. With his undesired attention he moved from city to city. William James Sidis passed away at the age of 46. Born a child prodigy, a man destined to change his story, forgotten for wanting to be happy.
