The Smartest Man Ever Enrolled At Harvard Aged 11, And The Sad Reason We Don’t Know His Name

There’s something strange going on at Harvard. An 11-year-old-boy is addressing the crowd — and he’s being taken very seriously. He speaks about complex math, and what he says wows folks many decades his senior. No, this is definitely no normal kid. But who is he? And given that he was smarter than Einstein, why don’t you know his name?

Child prodigy

That boy was William Sidis — the son of a psychologist and a doctor. And for a while, it looked as if he would achieve true greatness. By the time he was eight, reports claim, he could speak multiple languages, including one he’d made up. It was in mathematics that he really excelled, though. Sidis even made history through his remarkable talent.

Youngest Ivy-League student

At just 11 years old, Sidis became the youngest person ever to enroll at Harvard University. Not just any college, but arguably the most prestigious of them all — quite an achievement. All the pieces were in place for the child prodigy to grow into an incredible adult. But somewhere along the line, something went very wrong.

Smarter than Einstein

Although solid facts are hard to come by, many believe that Sidis had an IQ far above that of Albert Einstein’s. Surely, then, he was destined for big things? But a quick glance through any history book will confirm the strange truth: this genius never reached his full potential. And that has to make you ask: what happened?

Fleeing persecution

Sidis had plenty of support, after all — at least when he was a child. Born in 1898 in New York, he was the son of parents who had both fled persecution. His mother Sarah had escaped a series of religious purges in Russia during the 1880s, while his father Boris had run from politically motivated oppression to settle in the U.S. But despite — or perhaps because of — their turbulent backgrounds, the couple had big dreams for their young son.