William James Sidis
Encyclopedia
William James Sidis was an American
child prodigy
with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. His IQ was estimated to be between 250 and 300 (measures of IQ have changed over time since then) - one of the highest ever recorded - he entered Harvard early at age 11, and as an adult was conversant in over 40 languages and dialects. He became famous first for his precocity
, and later for his eccentricity
and withdrawal from the public eye. He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonym
s.
. His father Boris Sidis
, Ph.D., M.D., had emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution. His mother Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D., and her family had fled the pogrom
s in 1889. Sarah attended Boston University
and graduated from its School of Medicine
in 1897.
William was named after his godfather, Boris' friend and colleague, the American philosopher William James
. Boris earned his degrees at Harvard University
, and taught psychology
there. He was a psychiatrist
, and published numerous books and articles, performing pioneering work in abnormal psychology
. Boris was a polyglot and his son William would become one at a young age.
Sidis's parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, for which they were criticized. Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months, had reportedly taught himself eight languages (Latin
, Greek
, French
, Russian
, German
, Hebrew, Turkish
, and Armenian
) by age eight, and invented another, which he called Vendergood.
. He was 11 years old, and entered Harvard as part of a program to enroll gifted students early. The experimental group included mathematician Norbert Wiener
, Richard Buckminster Fuller
, and composer Roger Sessions
. In early 1910, Sidis's mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies. MIT
professor Daniel F. Comstock predicted that Sidis would become a great mathematician and a leader in that science in the future. Sidis began taking a full-time course load in 1910 and earned his Bachelor of Arts
degree, cum laude, on June 18, 1914, at age 16.
Shortly after graduation, he told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion
. He granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald
. The paper reported Sidis's vows to remain celibate
and never to marry
, as he said women did not appeal to him. Later he developed a strong affection for a young woman named Martha Foley
. He later enrolled at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
.
Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art (now Rice University
) in Houston, Texas
as a mathematics teaching assistant. He arrived at Rice in December 1915 at the age of 17. He was a graduate fellow working toward his doctorate
.
Sidis taught three classes: Euclidean geometry
, non-Euclidean geometry
, and trigonometry
(he wrote a textbook for the Euclidean geometry course in Greek). After less than a year, frustrated with the department, his teaching requirements, and his treatment by students older than he was, Sidis left his post and returned to New England
. When a friend later asked him why he had left, he replied, "I never knew why they gave me the job in the first place—I'm not much of a teacher
. I didn't leave—I was asked to go." Sidis abandoned his pursuit of a graduate degree in mathematics and enrolled at the Harvard Law School
in September 1916, but withdrew in good standing in his final year in March 1919.
parade in Boston
that turned violent. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison
under the Sedition Act of 1918
. Sidis's arrest featured prominently in newspapers, as his early graduation from Harvard had garnered considerable local celebrity. During the trial
, Sidis stated that he had been a conscientious objector
of the World War I
draft, and a socialist. (He later developed his own quasi-libertarian
philosophy based on individual rights and "the American social continuity"). His father arranged with the district attorney
to keep Sidis out of prison before his appeal came to trial; his parents, instead, held him in their sanatorium
in New Hampshire for a year. They took him to California
, where he spent another year. While at the sanatorium, his parents set about "reforming" him and threatened him with transfer to an insane asylum.
in 1921, Sidis was determined to live an independent and private life. He only took work running adding machine
s or other fairly menial tasks. He worked in New York City
and became estranged from his parents. It took years before he was cleared legally to return to Massachusetts
, and he was concerned about his risk of arrest for years. He collected streetcar transfer
s, published periodicals, and taught small circles of interested friends his version of American history. In 1933, Sidis passed a Civil Service exam in New York but scored a low ranking of 254. Sidis called this "disappointing."
In 1944, Sidis won a settlement from The New Yorker
for an article published in 1937. He had alleged it contained many false statements
. Under the title "Where Are They Now?", the pseudonymous article described Sidis's life as lonely, in a "hall bedroom in Boston's shabby South End". Lower courts had dismissed Sidis as a public figure
with no right to challenge personal publicity. He lost an appeal of an invasion of privacy
lawsuit at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
in 1940 over the same article. Judge Charles Edward Clark
expressed sympathy for Sidis—who claimed that the publication had exposed him to "public scorn, ridicule, and contempt" and caused him "grievous mental anguish [and] humiliation"—but found that the court was not disposed to "afford to all the intimate details of private life an absolute immunity from the prying of the press".
Sidis died in 1944 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 46. His father had died of the same malady in 1923 at age 56.
, to American Indian history, to a comprehensive and definitive taxonomy of vehicle transfers, an equally comprehensive study of civil engineering
and vehicles, and several well-substantiated lost texts on anthropology
, philology
, and transportation systems, Sidis covered a broad range of subjects. Some of his ideas concerned cosmological reversibility
, "social continuity," and individual rights in the United States.
In The Animate and the Inanimate (1925), Sidis predicted the existence of regions of space where the second law of thermodynamics
operated in reverse to the temporal direction that we experience in our local area. Everything outside of what we would today call a galaxy
would be such a region. Sidis claimed that the matter in this region would not generate light. (These dark areas of the universe are not properly dark matter
or black hole
s as they are used in contemporary cosmology.) This work on cosmology, based on his theory of reversibility of the second law of thermodynamics was the only book published under his name.
Sidis's The Tribes and the States
(ca. 1935) employs the pseudonym
"John W. Shattuck," giving a 100,000-year history of North America's inhabitants, from prehistoric times
to 1828. In this text, he suggests that "there were red men at one time in Europe as well as in America."
Sidis was also a "peridromophile
," a term he coined for people fascinated with transportation research and streetcar systems. He wrote a treatise on streetcar transfers under the pseudonym of "Frank Folupa" that identified means of increasing public transport usage.
In 1930, Sidis was awarded a patent for a rotary perpetual calendar
that took into account leap years.
called Vendergood in his second book, entitled Book of Vendergood, which he wrote at the age of eight. The language was mostly based on Latin
and Greek
, but also drew on German
and French
and other Romance languages
. It distinguished between eight different moods
: indicative, potential
, imperative absolute, subjunctive, imperative
, infinitive
, optative, and Sidis's own strongeable. Vendergood employed a base-12
system of numbers, because, as Sidis explained, "The unit in selling things is 12 of those things [dozens] and 12 is the smallest number that has four factors!"
Boris Sidis once dismissed tests of intelligence as "silly, pedantic, absurd, and grossly misleading." Sperling commented:
Sidis's life and work, particularly his ideas about Native Americans
, are extensively discussed in Robert M. Pirsig
's book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
(1991). Sidis is also discussed in Ex-Prodigy, an autobiography by mathematician Norbert Wiener
(1894–1964), who was a prodigy himself and a contemporary of Sidis at Harvard.
A Danish author, Morten Brask, wrote a fictional novel based on Sidis' life; "The Perfect Life of William Sidis" was published in Denmark in 2009.
The difficulties Sidis encountered in dealing with the social structure of a collegiate setting may have shaped opinion against allowing such children to rapidly advance through higher education in his day. Research indicates that a challenging curriculum can relieve social and emotional difficulties commonly experienced by gifted children. Embracing these findings, several colleges now have procedures for early entrance. The Davidson Institute for Talent Development
has developed a guidebook on the topic.
Sidis was portrayed derisively in the press
of the day. The New York Times, for example, described him as "a wonderfully successful result of a scientific forcing experiment." His mother later maintained that newspaper accounts of her son bore little resemblance to him.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. His IQ was estimated to be between 250 and 300 (measures of IQ have changed over time since then) - one of the highest ever recorded - he entered Harvard early at age 11, and as an adult was conversant in over 40 languages and dialects. He became famous first for his precocity
Precocial
In biology, the term precocial refers to species in which the young are relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth or hatching. The opposite developmental strategy is called "altricial," where the young are born or hatched helpless. Extremely precocial species may be called...
, and later for his eccentricity
Eccentricity (behavior)
In popular usage, eccentricity refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. This behavior would typically be perceived as unusual or unnecessary, without being demonstrably maladaptive...
and withdrawal from the public eye. He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s.
Parents and upbringing (1898–1909)
William James Sidis was born to Jewish Ukrainian immigrants on April 1, 1898, in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His father Boris Sidis
Boris Sidis
Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. was a Ukrainian Jewish psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education. Sidis founded the New York State Psychopathic Institute and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was the father of the child prodigy William James Sidis...
, Ph.D., M.D., had emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution. His mother Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D., and her family had fled the pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s in 1889. Sarah attended Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
and graduated from its School of Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine is one of the graduate schools of Boston University. Founded in 1848, the medical school holds the unique distinction as the first institution in the world to formally educate female physicians. Originally known as the New England Female Medical College, it was...
in 1897.
William was named after his godfather, Boris' friend and colleague, the American philosopher William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
. Boris earned his degrees at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and taught psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
there. He was a psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, and published numerous books and articles, performing pioneering work in abnormal psychology
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...
. Boris was a polyglot and his son William would become one at a young age.
Sidis's parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, for which they were criticized. Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months, had reportedly taught himself eight languages (Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Hebrew, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, and Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
) by age eight, and invented another, which he called Vendergood.
Harvard and college life (1905–1925)
Although the University had previously refused to let his father enroll him at age nine because he was still a child, Sidis set a record in 1909 by becoming the youngest person to enroll at Harvard CollegeHarvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
. He was 11 years old, and entered Harvard as part of a program to enroll gifted students early. The experimental group included mathematician Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
, Richard Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
, and composer Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
. In early 1910, Sidis's mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies. MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
professor Daniel F. Comstock predicted that Sidis would become a great mathematician and a leader in that science in the future. Sidis began taking a full-time course load in 1910 and earned his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree, cum laude, on June 18, 1914, at age 16.
Shortly after graduation, he told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion
Seclusion
The act of secluding, i.e. shutting out or keeping apart from society, or the state of being secluded, or a place that facilitates it . A person, a couple, or a larger group may go to a secluded place for privacy, or because the place is quiet...
. He granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
. The paper reported Sidis's vows to remain celibate
Celibacy
Celibacy is a personal commitment to avoiding sexual relations, in particular a vow from marriage. Typically celibacy involves avoiding all romantic relationships of any kind. An individual may choose celibacy for religious reasons, such as is the case for priests in some religions, for reasons of...
and never to marry
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, as he said women did not appeal to him. Later he developed a strong affection for a young woman named Martha Foley
Martha Foley
Martha Foley cofounded Story magazine in 1931 with her husband Whit Burnett. She achieved some notoriety by introducing notable authors through the magazine such as J. D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright...
. He later enrolled at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is the academic unit responsible for many post-baccalaureate degree programs offered through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University...
.
Teaching and further education (1915–1919)
After a group of Harvard students threatened Sidis physically, his parents secured him a job at the William Marsh RiceWilliam Marsh Rice
William Marsh Rice was an American businessman who bequeathed his fortune to found Rice University in Houston, Texas.-Biography:...
Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art (now Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
) in Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
as a mathematics teaching assistant. He arrived at Rice in December 1915 at the age of 17. He was a graduate fellow working toward his doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
.
Sidis taught three classes: Euclidean geometry
Euclidean geometry
Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to the Alexandrian Greek mathematician Euclid, which he described in his textbook on geometry: the Elements. Euclid's method consists in assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms, and deducing many other propositions from these...
, non-Euclidean geometry
Non-Euclidean geometry
Non-Euclidean geometry is the term used to refer to two specific geometries which are, loosely speaking, obtained by negating the Euclidean parallel postulate, namely hyperbolic and elliptic geometry. This is one term which, for historical reasons, has a meaning in mathematics which is much...
, and trigonometry
Trigonometry
Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that studies triangles and the relationships between their sides and the angles between these sides. Trigonometry defines the trigonometric functions, which describe those relationships and have applicability to cyclical phenomena, such as waves...
(he wrote a textbook for the Euclidean geometry course in Greek). After less than a year, frustrated with the department, his teaching requirements, and his treatment by students older than he was, Sidis left his post and returned to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. When a friend later asked him why he had left, he replied, "I never knew why they gave me the job in the first place—I'm not much of a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
. I didn't leave—I was asked to go." Sidis abandoned his pursuit of a graduate degree in mathematics and enrolled at the Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
in September 1916, but withdrew in good standing in his final year in March 1919.
Politics and arrest (1919–1921)
In 1919, shortly after his withdrawal from law school, Sidis was arrested for participating in a socialist May DayMay Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
parade in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
that turned violent. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
under the Sedition Act of 1918
Sedition Act of 1918
The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds...
. Sidis's arrest featured prominently in newspapers, as his early graduation from Harvard had garnered considerable local celebrity. During the trial
Trial
A trial is, in the most general sense, a test, usually a test to see whether something does or does not meet a given standard.It may refer to:*Trial , the presentation of information in a formal setting, usually a court...
, Sidis stated that he had been a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
of the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
draft, and a socialist. (He later developed his own quasi-libertarian
Libertarian
Libertarian may refer to:*A proponent of libertarianism, a political philosophy that upholds individual liberty, especially freedom of expression and action*A member of a libertarian political party; including:**Libertarian Party...
philosophy based on individual rights and "the American social continuity"). His father arranged with the district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
to keep Sidis out of prison before his appeal came to trial; his parents, instead, held him in their sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in New Hampshire for a year. They took him to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where he spent another year. While at the sanatorium, his parents set about "reforming" him and threatened him with transfer to an insane asylum.
Later life (1921–1944)
After returning to the East CoastEast Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
in 1921, Sidis was determined to live an independent and private life. He only took work running adding machine
Adding machine
An adding machine was a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations.In the United States, the earliest adding machines were usually built to read in dollars and cents. Adding machines were ubiquitous office equipment until they were phased out in favor of...
s or other fairly menial tasks. He worked in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and became estranged from his parents. It took years before he was cleared legally to return to Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, and he was concerned about his risk of arrest for years. He collected streetcar transfer
Transit pass
A transit pass is a ticket that allows a passenger of the service take either a certain number of pre-purchased trips, or unlimited trips within a fixed period of time...
s, published periodicals, and taught small circles of interested friends his version of American history. In 1933, Sidis passed a Civil Service exam in New York but scored a low ranking of 254. Sidis called this "disappointing."
In 1944, Sidis won a settlement from The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
for an article published in 1937. He had alleged it contained many false statements
Slander and libel
Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander , and libel —is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image...
. Under the title "Where Are They Now?", the pseudonymous article described Sidis's life as lonely, in a "hall bedroom in Boston's shabby South End". Lower courts had dismissed Sidis as a public figure
Public figure
Public figure is a legal term applied in the context of defamation actions as well as invasion of privacy. A public figure cannot base a lawsuit on incorrect harmful statements unless there is proof that the writer or publisher acted with actual malice...
with no right to challenge personal publicity. He lost an appeal of an invasion of privacy
Invasion of privacy
United States privacy law embodies several different legal concepts. One is the invasion of privacy, a tort based in common law allowing an aggrieved party to bring a lawsuit against an individual who unlawfully intrudes into his or her private affairs, discloses his or her private information,...
lawsuit at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
in 1940 over the same article. Judge Charles Edward Clark
Charles Edward Clark
Charles Edward Clark was a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1939 to 1963. A native of Connecticut, Clark attended Yale College and Yale Law School...
expressed sympathy for Sidis—who claimed that the publication had exposed him to "public scorn, ridicule, and contempt" and caused him "grievous mental anguish [and] humiliation"—but found that the court was not disposed to "afford to all the intimate details of private life an absolute immunity from the prying of the press".
Sidis died in 1944 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 46. His father had died of the same malady in 1923 at age 56.
Publications and subjects of research
From writings on cosmologyCosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, to American Indian history, to a comprehensive and definitive taxonomy of vehicle transfers, an equally comprehensive study of civil engineering
Civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...
and vehicles, and several well-substantiated lost texts on anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, and transportation systems, Sidis covered a broad range of subjects. Some of his ideas concerned cosmological reversibility
Time reversibility
Time reversibility is an attribute of some stochastic processes and some deterministic processes.If a stochastic process is time reversible, then it is not possible to determine, given the states at a number of points in time after running the stochastic process, which state came first and which...
, "social continuity," and individual rights in the United States.
In The Animate and the Inanimate (1925), Sidis predicted the existence of regions of space where the second law of thermodynamics
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
operated in reverse to the temporal direction that we experience in our local area. Everything outside of what we would today call a galaxy
Galaxy
A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...
would be such a region. Sidis claimed that the matter in this region would not generate light. (These dark areas of the universe are not properly dark matter
Dark matter
In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly detected via optical or radio astronomy...
or black hole
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
s as they are used in contemporary cosmology.) This work on cosmology, based on his theory of reversibility of the second law of thermodynamics was the only book published under his name.
Sidis's The Tribes and the States
The Tribes and the States
The Tribes and the States is a book written by American child prodigy William James Sidis that outlines the history of the Native Americans, focusing mostly on the Northeastern tribes and continuing up to the mid-19th century. It was written around 1935 but was never published for lack of...
(ca. 1935) employs the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"John W. Shattuck," giving a 100,000-year history of North America's inhabitants, from prehistoric times
Prehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...
to 1828. In this text, he suggests that "there were red men at one time in Europe as well as in America."
Sidis was also a "peridromophile
Railfan
A railfan or rail buff , railway enthusiast or railway buff , or trainspotter , is a person interested in a recreational capacity in rail transport...
," a term he coined for people fascinated with transportation research and streetcar systems. He wrote a treatise on streetcar transfers under the pseudonym of "Frank Folupa" that identified means of increasing public transport usage.
In 1930, Sidis was awarded a patent for a rotary perpetual calendar
Perpetual calendar
A perpetual calendar is a calendar which is good for a span of many years, such as the Runic calendar.- General information :...
that took into account leap years.
Vendergood language
Sidis created a constructed languageConstructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
called Vendergood in his second book, entitled Book of Vendergood, which he wrote at the age of eight. The language was mostly based on Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, but also drew on German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and other Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
. It distinguished between eight different moods
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
: indicative, potential
Potential
*In linguistics, the potential mood*The mathematical study of potentials is known as potential theory; it is the study of harmonic functions on manifolds...
, imperative absolute, subjunctive, imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
, infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
, optative, and Sidis's own strongeable. Vendergood employed a base-12
Duodecimal
The duodecimal system is a positional notation numeral system using twelve as its base. In this system, the number ten may be written as 'A', 'T' or 'X', and the number eleven as 'B' or 'E'...
system of numbers, because, as Sidis explained, "The unit in selling things is 12 of those things [dozens] and 12 is the smallest number that has four factors!"
Legacy
Abraham Sperling, director of New York City's Aptitude Testing Institute, allegedly said after Sidis's death that according to his calculations, Sidis "easily had an IQ between 250 and 300", meaning that at some time his intellectual age was 2.5 to 3 times his actual age (not the same scale as modern deviation IQ). However, it was later acknowledged that some of his biographers, such as Amy Wallace, exaggerated how high his IQ actually was and exactly what Sperling had claimed. Sperling actually stated “Helena Sidis told me that a few years before his death, her brother Bill took an intelligence test with a psychologist. His score was the very highest that had ever been obtained. In terms of I.Q., the psychologist related that the figure would be between 250 and 300. Late in life William Sidis took general intelligence tests for Civil Service positions in New York and Boston. His phenomenal ratings are matter of record.” It has been acknowledged that Helena and William's mother Sarah had developed a reputation to exaggerate claims about the Sidis family. Helena had also falsely claimed that William scored an IQ of 254 on his Civil Service exam in 1933, when in fact he had only ranked 254, and that "Billy knew all the languages in the world, while my father only knew twenty-seven. I wonder if there were any Billy didn’t know."Boris Sidis once dismissed tests of intelligence as "silly, pedantic, absurd, and grossly misleading." Sperling commented:
"What the journalists did not report, and perhaps did not know, was that during all the years of his obscure employments he was writing original treatises on history, government, economics and political affairs. In a visit to his mother's home I was permitted to see the contents of a trunkful of original manuscript material that Bill Sidis composed."
Sidis's life and work, particularly his ideas about Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
, are extensively discussed in Robert M. Pirsig
Robert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsig is an American writer and philosopher, and author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals .-Background:...
's book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals is the second philosophical novel by Robert M. Pirsig, who is best known for his classic text, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992...
(1991). Sidis is also discussed in Ex-Prodigy, an autobiography by mathematician Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
(1894–1964), who was a prodigy himself and a contemporary of Sidis at Harvard.
A Danish author, Morten Brask, wrote a fictional novel based on Sidis' life; "The Perfect Life of William Sidis" was published in Denmark in 2009.
Sidis in education discussions
The debate about Sidis's manner of upbringing occurred within a larger discourse about the best way to educate children. Newspapers criticized Boris Sidis's child-rearing methods. Most educators of the day believed that schools should expose children to common experiences to create good citizens. Most psychologists thought intelligence was hereditary—a position that precluded early childhood education at home.The difficulties Sidis encountered in dealing with the social structure of a collegiate setting may have shaped opinion against allowing such children to rapidly advance through higher education in his day. Research indicates that a challenging curriculum can relieve social and emotional difficulties commonly experienced by gifted children. Embracing these findings, several colleges now have procedures for early entrance. The Davidson Institute for Talent Development
Davidson Institute for Talent Development
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development is a nationwide nonprofit organization established by former educational software entrepreneurs, Bob and Jan Davidson...
has developed a guidebook on the topic.
Sidis was portrayed derisively in the press
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
of the day. The New York Times, for example, described him as "a wonderfully successful result of a scientific forcing experiment." His mother later maintained that newspaper accounts of her son bore little resemblance to him.
External links
- Sidis Archives
- Links to Sidis material, Quantonics
- Episode 36 of The Memory Palace podcast titled "Six Scenes from the Life of William James Sidis, Wonderful Boy"