William James Sidis (; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills. He wrote the book The Animate and the Inanimate, published in 1925 (written around 1920), in which he speculated about the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics.
His father, the psychiatrist Boris Sidis, raised his son according to certain principles with the desire for his son to be gifted. Sidis became famous first for his precocity and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from public life. Eventually, he avoided mathematics altogether, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonyms. He entered Harvard University at age 11 and, as an adult, was said to have an IQ between 250 and 300, and to be conversant in about 25 languages and dialects. Some of these statements have not been verified, but many of his contemporaries, including Norbert Wiener, Daniel Frost Comstock, and William James, agreed that he was extremely intelligent.
Biography
Parents and upbringing (1898–1908) Sidis was born to Jewish emigrants from Ukraine, on April 1, 1898, in New York City. His father, Boris Sidis, had emigrated in 1887 to escape political and antisemitic persecution. His mother, Sarah (Mandelbaum) Sidis, and her family had fled the pogroms in the late 1880s. She attended Boston University and graduated from its School of Medicine in 1897. William was named after his godfather, Boris's friend and colleague, the American philosopher William James. Boris was a psychiatrist and published many books and articles, performing pioneering work in abnormal psychology. He was a polyglot, and his son William also became one at a young age.
Sidis's parents believed in nurturing precocious and fearless love of knowledge, although their methods of parenting were criticized in the media and retrospectively. Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months. By age eight, he had reportedly taught himself eight languages (Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish, and Armenian) and invented another, which he called "Vendergood".
Harvard University and college life (1909–1914) Although the university had previously refused to let his father enroll him at age 9 because he was still a child, in 1909, at age 11, Sidis set a record by becoming the youngest person to enroll at Harvard University. In early 1910, Sidis's mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies, attracting nationwide attention. Notable child prodigy cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener, who attended Harvard at the time and knew Sidis, wrote in his book Ex-Prodigy: "The talk would have done credit to a first or second-year graduate student of any age...talk represented the triumph of the unaided efforts of a very brilliant child." MIT physics professor Daniel F. Comstock was full of praises: "Karl Friedrich Gauss is the only example in history, of all prodigies, whom Sidis resembles. I predict that young Sidis will be a great astronomical mathematician. He will evolve new theories and invent new ways of calculating astronomical phenomena. I believe he will be a great mathematician, the 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, earning a mixture of A, B and C grades.
Shortly after graduation, Sidis told reporters: "I want to live the perfect life. The only way to live the perfect life is to live it 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 Martha Foley, and enrolled at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Teaching and further education (1915–1919) After a group of Harvard students physically threatened Sidis, his parents secured him a job at the William Marsh Rice 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 age 17. He was a graduate fellow working toward his doctorate.