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William James Sidis
Sidis at his Harvard graduation (1914)
Born	(1898-04-01)April 1, 1898 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	July 17, 1944(1944-07-17) (aged 46) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Other names	John W. Shattuck Frank Folupa Parker Greene Jacob Marmor
Alma mater	Harvard University (BA) Rice Institute
Notable work	The Animate and the Inanimate (1925) The Tribes and the States (c. 1935)

William James Sidis (/\u02c8sa\u026ad\u026as/; April 1, 1898 \u2013 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.\n

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 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.\n

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Authority control databases $\"Edit$
International	ISNI VIAF FAST WorldCat
National	Germany United States Netherlands Israel
Other	SNAC

v t e High IQ
Topics	\n Intelligence quotient \n Levels of measurement: Ordinal scale \n IQ classification \n Intellectual giftedness \n Human intelligence \n Standardized testing \n
High IQ societies	\n Mensa International (top 2%) \n Intertel (top 1%) \n Triple Nine Society (top 0.1%) \n
Testing	\n Stanford\u2013Binet Intelligence Scales \n Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale \n Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children \n Raven's Progressive Matrices \n Cattell Culture Fair III \n
Figures in high IQ research	\n Lewis Terman \n Leta Stetter Hollingworth \n Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski \n
Longitudinal studies	\n Terman Study of the Gifted \n Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth \n Study of Exceptional Talent \n
Related	\n Densa \n

Biography

Parents and upbringing (1898\u20131908)

Harvard University (1909\u20131914)

Teaching at Rice University and Harvard Law School (1915\u20131919)

Politics and arrest (1919\u20131921)

Later life (1921\u20131944)

Writing and research

The Animate and the Inanimate

The Tribes and the States

Vendergood language

Legacy

In education discussions

Bibliography

References

Sources

External links

William James Sidis

Media collections