The Mathematician Forced to Become a Genius

Norbert Wiener’s father molded him into a genius. Try https://brilliant.org/Newsthink/ for FREE for 30 days, and get 20% off your annual premium subscription.

Watch my video on William James Sidis, the sad story of the smartest man who ever lived:    • The Sad Story of the Smartest Man Who...  

Chapters:
0:00 A Father’s Experiment
1:44 Homeschooling Through Tears
3:06 A Lonely Genius
4:08 A Shocking Discovery
4:33 Undermined by His Father
5:45 Intellectual Awakening in Europe
6:47 War, Rejection & Finding Purpose
7:57 The Telegram That Changed Everything
8:35 Opportunity at MIT & Brownian Motion
9:55 Finding Love & Personal Freedom
10:27 Ethical Dilemmas & The Nuclear Age
11:19 The Breakthrough: Cybernetics
12:22 Final Reflections
14:07 Today’s Sponsor: Brilliant

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Sources:
19th-century classroom courtesy of © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar via Wikimedia Commons (transformed into black and white by Newsthink Ltd.)
Chemical laboratory: Wellcome Images, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... via Wikimedia Commons