About William James Sidis
William James Sidis (; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with mathematical and linguistic skills. He was active as a mathematician, linguist, historian, and author. He wrote the book The Animate and the Inanimate, published in 1925, in which he speculated about the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics. His works were published under various pseudonyms, as he never used his real name as an author. His father, the psychologist 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 claimed by family members to have an IQ between 250 and 300, and to be conversant in about 25 languages and dialects. These statements have not been verified, but many of his contemporaries, including Norbert Wiener and Daniel Frost Comstock, agreed that he was extremely intelligent. He retreated from public life after being arrested and tried for his presence at a socialist parade and died young from a brain hemorrhage. Sidis created a constructed language called Vendergood in his second book, the Book of Vendergood, which he wrote at age 7. Boris Sidis first petitioned Harvard University to admit his nine-year-old son in 1907, but the faculty committee, while impressed by Sidis's abilities, felt he was too young socially and emotionally for university life. Despite his early academic success, Sidis deliberately withdrew from public attention following his imprisonment during the First Red Scare and spent the remainder of his life working in anonymity while pursuing private scholarly interests. Born to Boris Sidis, a prominent psychiatrist, and Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, a physician, Sidis demonstrated extraordinary intellectual capabilities from infancy.
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