The tragic story of the smartest man in history: IQ was over 250, and today no one even knows his name

The only one who surpassed Tesla.

The names of Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein or Steven Hawking are most often mentioned when they talk about superintelligence.

Hawking is not even the most intelligent living human species. In fact, it occupies only 10th place, and in front of it, along with distinguished geniuses from the past, two chess champions, columnists of the Parade magazine and three supergenians of Asian origin settled in. Cristopher Hirata and Terence Tao recorded an IQ higher than 220.

All geniuses from the list are known to the world public because of their great success or extraordinary contributions to humanity, but the controversial leader of this scale is actually quite unknown. His name is William James Sidis.

This American of Ukrainian descent, born in 1898, already showed him outstanding mathematical and linguistic abilities as a child. After his death, the public leaked information that it was the most brilliant specimen the human race had ever produced, and that its intelligence coefficient, based on the psychological test of 1933, was allegedly estimated somewhere between 250 and 300. Let us recall the normal coefficient The average person's intelligence is between 90 and 110.

In his case, the genes did their part of the job as his parents were very educated and extremely successful in academic terms. His love for learning foreign languages came from Father Boris who was famous for his excellent polyglot.

Under his father's influence, he developed his potentials and, apparently, learned to read and write at the age of 18 months, Homer read in the original as a four-year-old, studied Aristotle's logic in the sixth, passed seven anatomical exams, wrote eight books in the eighth. At age 11, Harvard enrolled, and five years later graduated. He even invented his own language, which he called Wendergud.

In addition to the aforementioned talents, Sidis was allegedly able to estimate the date of any date in history, and was concerned with the enormous amount of historical data. He has also published numerous works from anthropology, philology, sociology, psychology, thermodynamics and many other areas.

In adulthood, he claimed to speak more than 40 languages, but he never recorded a significant life success or career of his genius-his entire life worked as an ordinary accountant in various companies.

Because of Sidis's eccentricity and withdrawal from social life, there are many untrustworthy Tom. Critics argue that his distinctive character is the reason why he is often exaggerated in the debate about his intelligence. Allegedly, the records are full of half-truths, inclinations and myths, and relatively little information about Sidis can be undoubtedly confirmed.

The fact that William often wrote under pseudonyms is also confusing in this story, and his entire work is difficult to compose, and therefore to assess it.

• 15 Jan, 2018
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