Biography of the Smartest man ever to live: William Boris Sidis.

A biographic post:

William James Sidis born on April 1, 1898, was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills. He was born to Jewish emigrants from Ukraine, on April 1, 1898, in New York City. His father, Boris Sidis, PhD, M.D., had emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution. His mother, Sarah (Mandelbaum) Sidis, M.D., and her family had fled the pogroms in the late 1880s. Sarah attended Boston University and graduated from its School of Medicine in 1897. With geniussness running in his blood, and with the parenting methods of his father, nothing could stop him from being the smartest person in history.  We can have hint of his iq from following incident: 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”.( The grammars of this language is found in his second book written at age of 8: Book of Vendergood )

Sidis set a record in 1909 by becoming the youngest person to enroll at Harvard University. In early 1910, Sidis’ mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies which brought him nationwide attention. 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.

Shortly after graduation, he told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion, and also remain celibate and never to marry, as he said women did not appeal to him. Later he developed a strong affection for Martha Foley, one year older than him(who later however,  married the editor Will Burnett  with whom she co-founded Story magazine).

By the age of 17,Sidis taught three classes in the Rice university (Houston, Texas): Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, and freshman math in (he wrote a textbook for the Euclidean geometry course in Greek). After less than a year, frustrated with the department, his teaching requirements, and his treatment by students older than himself, Sidis left his post and returned to New England.

Sidis in later years was determined to live an independent and private life. He only took work running adding machines or other fairly menial tasks. He worked in New York City and became estranged from his parents. He obsessively collected streetcar transfers, wrote self-published periodicals, and taught small circles of interested friends his version of American history. In 1933, Sidis passed a Civil Service exam in New York, but scored a low ranking of 254. He in the later years was much humiliated by the newspaper agencies

Next such incident would be the article published in New York times Under the title “Where Are They Now?”, James Thurber pseudonymously described Sidis’s life as lonely, in a “hall bedroom in Boston’s shabby South End”.

For which he filed a case saying it invaded his privacy, but
Lower courts had dismissed Sidis as a public figure with no right to challenge personal publicity and He lost an appeal of an invasion of privacy lawsuit at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1940 over the same article.Judge Charles Edward Clark expressed sympathy for Sidis, who claimed that the publication had exposed him to “public scorn, ridicule, and contempt” and caused him “grievous mental anguish and humiliation,” but found that the court was not disposed to “afford to all the intimate details of private life an absolute immunity from the prying of the press”.

Sidis died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944 in Boston at age 46. His father had died from the same malady in 1923 at age 56.
While Einstein and Newton are assumed to have iq of 160 and 190 respectively.
The smartest man ever to live till date was reported to have IQ of 300. He had very good mind through which he could revlotionize the world with his ideas, but unfortunately he died just at the age of 46. However the world still remembers him as the smartest man ever to live.

Reference:

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis

2. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1944-smartest-man-in-the-world-dies-1.5305833.