Gentleman, with IQ more than Einstein and Newton

Two days back marked the birth anniversary of Albert Einstein who was the theoretical physicist and made some remarkable achievements in the field of physics. Therefore, I thought I should give a meticulous read to his work and contributions and what distinguishes all from Albert Einstein in general. In my view, there was no other way to celebrate a researcher’s birth anniversary than researching for the facts. Consequently, when I was researching I got one eminent point and it was the high IQ level that differentiates us from this renowned physicist. I wondered that the possibility of having a high-sky IQ level is just 2/7b that means in the world population of 7 billion there were not a single individual than Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton who could have a high IQ level and amid this research one name popped up and I was just startled, there was a man who had an IQ higher than Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. A smartest man in the history. You have never heard of him. Albert Einstein had an IQ of 160. Where Isaac Newton’s IQ was 190. However, the man under discussion had an IQ of 260. His name is William James Sidis. Never heard of him right?

At the age of just eight, William could speak eight languages. William was born in 1898 in New York. His parents were geniuses themselves. William’s father was a psychologist who graduated from Harvard. With intelligence running in his blood and with an IQ higher than the likes of Einstein he was destined to be successful but we have never heard of him. So what really happened? At the age of just eighteen months William could read the New York Times. By the age of eight he learned Latin, Greek, French, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian on his own. He didn’t only learn the languages he even invented a language of his own ‘Vendergood”. He was also the youngest person ever to be admitted to Harvard. It was the year 1909 William was accepted into Harvard at the age of just 11. By 1910, William started lecturing his own Mathematics professors. He was titled as a “child prodigy”. He was done with his Bachelors of Arts degree by the age of 16. William became famous because of his excellent capabilities. But fame was not his cup of tea. William wanted to live a secluded life. He liked to live alone. According to him it was a perfect life. He also added that he never wanted to get married. William wanted to get away from all the fame and attention. William’s father knew that his son was special. He pushed him a lot to carry on with his education.  But as William grew up he refused to live life on his father’s terms. He wanted to live a normal life. This led to a feud between the father and son. With all the attention and fame, William wanted to keep a low profile. That’s why he work as a clerk and other small jobs.

But then again still, he used to get recognized by people. Soon the headlines turned against him. When William started working a $100 a month job. The newspaper mocked his intelligence saying that he lost the capabilities that he had in childhood. Soon, William became a socialist. During World War I, he was an objector and protested in Boston against the war. As a result, He was arrested and sentenced for eighteen months in prison. But his parents bailed him out. William spent the rest of his life in loneliness. He had no contact with his family. He worked as a machine worked to earn his bread. The man who had the ability to change the world passed away at the age of just 46 in 1944. William was lost in history forever. The gist of the story is that it is not just the IQ that differentiates us from Albert Einstein but the will to change the world. The will to put the facts on the table for the next generations. The will to not let our generations start from a scratch. The will to question to self that how do you hear from the dead? And how do you speak to the unborn? Serving the world is not by chance it is by choice. You choose to serve the mankind, you are not being selected for it you strive to explore the answers and storm up with more new questions, and you unfold every reality by questioning and putting the answers in the mainstream for the mankind. Every other person we observe or read in history has had chosen to serve the mankind. Perhaps William James Sidis would have been one of them. Dilemma is, celebrating the person not on time results into a loss not for a person but for World. Such great personas then find solutions in isolation, Sidis himself said,

“I want to live the perfect life. The only way to live the perfect life is through seclusion. I have always hated crowds.”

WRITER: HIRA ARSHAD