The Story Of The Most Intelligent Man In The World

The most intelligent man in the world had an astonishing mind and an IQ of between 250 and 300. William James Sidis was a human calculator and a linguistic genius. Because he was so intelligent, great things were expected of him. However, he had a problem that he could never solve and that led him to an early death: sadness.

Let’s imagine for a moment an 18 – month – old baby who can already read The New York Times. Now we see him at the age of eight. He speaks fluent French, German, Russian, Turkish, Armenian, Latin and of course his mother tongue, English. Let’s go a little further and visualize this same little child at 9 years old, who creates a new language called  vendergood,  studied by linguists and declared to be complete, correct and fascinating.

This child was William James Sidis, son of Jewish-Russian immigrants, born in New York on April 1, 1898. Much has been said about him, and much more has been written about him. As often happens, fiction mixes with reality. The facts are exaggerated and the authors paint a nice picture from a man’s biography which in reality is quite gloomy. That said, from a psychological point of view, his biography is hugely fascinating.

The physical testimony and documentaries confirm many of the facts. One of them is simple and transcendent: despite being so intelligent, William J. Sidis never had a childhood and never enjoyed being a little boy. When he was only 9 years old, he was accepted to Harvard University. On a cold evening in January 1910, at the age of twelve, he gave his first lecture on the fourth dimension to the scientific community and the press.

His parents, a famous Russian psychologist and one of the first female doctors at the time, had a very clear goal in mind: to create a genius. They educated his mind and completely forgot the essential part: his heart and his emotions.

William James Sidis

The most intelligent man had good genes, abilities and a very favorable environment

To learn every detail about the life of “the most intelligent man in the world”, we used the book “The Prodigy: A Biography of William James Sadis, America’s Greatest Child Prodigy” , by Amy Wallace. We were immediately struck by the way the book describes how our main character was raised.

Both his mother and father had brilliant heads, and the genetic factor clearly played an important role in the development of his high-level intelligence. However, the couple’s intention to have children was as clear as it was controversial: they wanted to train the child’s head so that he would become a genius.

A life in the laboratory and in a public exhibition

In addition to the genetic factor, William grew up in a highly stimulating and learning-promoting environment that was designed with a specific purpose in mind. We know that his father, Boris Sidis, used sophisticated techniques, including hypnosis, to advance his son’s potential and abilities at an early age.

His mother’s contribution was to leave medicine to, in her words, “shape” the child and come up with new learning strategies. It is worth mentioning that William himself showed a strong will to learn, but being constantly exposed to the public and to the media traumatized him.

His parents often published professional articles about the child’s achievements. The media, as well as the scientific community, kept an eye on him. We know that while studying at Harvard, he suffered from daily persecution by the press. After graduating cum laude and impressing academics with their theories about the fourth dimension, they took him to the University of Houston to give math lectures and start their law degree.

The sad end of the most intelligent man in the world

William would not complete his law degree or anyone else, despite his intelligence. He was not even 17 years old when he decided to rebel against his environment. In this academic and experimental world, he felt like a guinea pig, each his thought and every move analyzed under a microscope. In 1919 he was arrested and imprisoned for inciting a protest and recruiting young people for the communist movement.

Given his importance and influence from his parents, he was quickly released from prison. But in his desire to defy his parents and society, he did not stop there. He caused youth rebellion against capitalism and was extremely arrogant in front of the judges. He was finally imprisoned for two years, and achieved what he really wanted: loneliness and isolation.

After he was released, changing his name was the first thing William J. Sidis did. He longed for an uneventful life, but he was constantly persecuted by his parents and the press. In an attempt to escape them, he began his continuous pilgrimage throughout the United States, finding random jobs and doing what he enjoyed most: writing. He published several times under various pseudonyms. He wrote books on history and books on black hole theories. According to his biographers, there may be dozens of forgotten books written by William J. Sidis hiding under a false identity.

William J. Sidis

A lonely and premature end for the most intelligent man

William J. Sidis loved only one woman: Martha Foley, a young Irish activist with whom he had a different and complex relationship. Her picture was the only thing found in his clothes when they discovered his lifeless body in a small apartment in Boston in 1944. He was 46 years old and died of a stroke.

His last year was spent going from trial to trial. The press liked to blacken him. “The prodigy who never came to anything is now crying as he works as a warehouse boy” , “the most intelligent man in the world has a miserable life” , “the mathematical and linguistic genius has burned out” , “William J. Sidis is tired of think ” .

We do not know if he was really tired of thinking or living. Still, what we can deduce from reading his biographies is that he was tired of society, his family and the academic world that had set such high expectations of him, even before he was born.

William James Sidis is still the person with the highest IQ ever recorded. The one after him is young Terence Tao, with an IQ of 225-230, a young Australian mathematician who currently lectures at the University of Los Angeles.

It is very likely that in some parts of the world there is an unidentified prodigy (or more) who has a similar or even higher IQ. The truth is it does not matter because numbers are just that: numbers. The most important thing in these cases is that they are allowed to have a childhood, to be children, to enjoy safe emotional attachments that allow them to fulfill their desires, freely and without pressure.

Because as we have seen from this story, extreme intelligence is not always synonymous with happiness.