W. J. Sidis

William James Sidis (pro­nounced “SIGH-dis”), child prodi­gy, book author, eccen­tric (1898–1944)

William James Sidis

Was a class­mate of R. Buck­min­ster Fuller. Was treat­ed as a “sin­is­ter” genius when young, receiv­ing bad pub­lic­i­ty and press. Could read The New York Times at age 1.5 and invent­ed his own lan­guage, Vender­good. Attend­ed Har­vard in 1909, set­ting a record as youngest enrolled stu­dent there (grad­u­at­ed cum laude 1914). Father was Dr. Boris Sidis, MD, impor­tant ear­ly psy­chol­o­gist.

Called “The great­est mind ever,” “the smartest per­son on earth”; had an IQ between 250 and 300 and today is large­ly for­got­ten. [arti­cle] [wikipedia] [short bio] [FAQ]

[amazonify]0525244042[/amazonify]

The main Sidis biog­ra­phy is [amazonify]0525244042::text::::The Prodi­gy[/amazonify] by Amy Wal­lace [tonics.com/The_Prodigy_Review.html”>review] but he’s also the sub­ject of the new dig­i­tal book [amazonify]B00121WJAK::text::::Myths, Facts, and Lies About Prodi­gies: A Histori­og­ra­phy of William James Sidis[/amazonify] by Lar­ry Gowdy (Woven Strings Pub­lish­ing 2007). [[amazonify]B00121WJAK::text::::kindle[/amazonify]]

The W. J. Sidis Archives con­tain his books, let­ters, arti­cles and oth­er writ­ings.

Sidis had a spe­cial con­nec­tion with the Wampum — he wrote on and stud­ied the history of North Amer­i­ca and had an appar­ent “mys­ti­cal rela­tion­ship” (scroll down) with these Indi­ans, in par­tic­u­lar the lib­er­ty-lov­ing Oka­makammes­set tribe in ancient New Eng­land.

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Books and writings

Sidis’ actu­al writ­ings can be dif­fi­cult to obtain.

Book of Vender­good describes the lan­guage invent­ed by Sidis. Book writ­ten when Sidis was eight.

The Ani­mate and the Inan­i­mate is a book about cos­mol­o­gy and astro­physics and has been called “a dev­as­tat­ing blow to the Big Bang the­o­ry.” In 1979, this book received high praise and endorse­ment from Bucky Fuller. First edi­tion is exceed­ing­ly rare.

The Tribes and the States, a 100,000-year history of North Amer­i­ca. (Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished under pseu­do­nym John W. Shat­tuck)

Books with a passing mention to Sidis

[amazonify]0962874612[/amazonify] [amazonify]0252018230[/amazonify] [amazonify]0801885876[/amazonify] [amazonify]1412015545[/amazonify]
[amazonify]0543693961[/amazonify] [amazonify]073821082X[/amazonify] [amazonify]1439101655[/amazonify] [amazonify]0465039170[/amazonify]
[amazonify]0738204412[/amazonify] [amazonify]0465017592[/amazonify] [amazonify]0465021255[/amazonify] [amazonify]0743297784[/amazonify]
[amazonify]0195128796[/amazonify] [amazonify]0521008492[/amazonify] [amazonify]1405130229[/amazonify] [amazonify]0898622018[/amazonify]

First published on February 19th, 2009 at 1:10 pm (EST) and last modified on February 26th, 2009 at 10:36 am (EST).


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