Another Prodigy

William J. Sidis, who in 1909, aged eleven, rosy-cheeked, delivered a lecture on the fourth dimension before the Department of Mathematics at Harvard, was even more a prodigy than Professor Gildersleeve. But from a recent report in the New York Tribune, it appears that he has abandoned the intellectual life.

His father, the late Dr. Boris Sidis, eminent authority on psychopathology, decided when his son was born to give him a more intensive education than the American school, with what Dr. Boris called at the time its "discipline and routine," its "rubbish and refuse," could furnish. The boy could read and write at the age of two; at seven he passed the Harvard Medical School examinations in anatomy; at eight he could speak French, Russian, English, German, and could read Latin and Greek; at ten he entered Tufts; and at eleven he entered Harvard, graduating in 1914. He taught mathematics in Rice Institute, Texas, returned to Boston and was arrested for participating in a socialist demonstration in 1919. After that he dropped out of public notice.

Now, according to the Tribune, he has cut himself off from his family, has renounced books and ideas, is content with a clerical job in Manhattan for which he is paid $23 a week. When the news of his father's death reached him recently, he was not interested, refused to attend the funeral.

Said the Tribune:

"Yesterday young Sidis was wearing a cheap brown suit, much too tight for his fleshy frame. He had not been shaved; his reddish mustache was a ragged fringe that appeared to have been whacked off with a pair of manicure scissors. His mop of mouse-colored hair was in need of trimming. His necktie was in a hard knot that did not come within inches of his collar."

Other papers, excited by the loud baying of the Tribune, took up the scent. The Sporting Editor of the Telegram (Manhattan) vaporized as follows: "He has insisted on doing work that required no thinking. Poor kid! His boyhood was burned up in thinking. That is all he has ever done, and now he wants a rest." The Sun and The Globe dug up a story about a girl: "As he talks to associates in radical circles Sidis sometimes takes Miss Foley's picture from his pocket and looks at it--and then he smiles."

The whole truth in the matter would be welcome, although if William Sidis prefers that nothing more be said about him, nothing more should be said. American newspapers generally have been unsympathetic in their treatment of prodigies. It is possible that the notoriety of the present case several years ago was too much for its subject, and he gave up in disgust. Or it may be that Mr. Sidis had not the capacity of Professor Gildersleeve and John Stuart Mill to carry on with his work. Whatever the facts, the Tribune has succumbed to the democratic temptation to crow over the failure of an extraordinary individual. The case, of course, proves nothing whatever about prodigies, except that the crowd is jealous of them.