Hans Henrik Honnens de Lichtenberg writes, “Here is a fine selection of books by the extraordinary man, William James Sidis. A January morning in 1910 hundreds of students and professors gathered in the great lecture hall at Harvard University. On stage steps up William James Sidis to present his research about the mathematics of the fourth dimension. William was just eleven years old. William James Sidis was a genius and he still has the highest IQ ever recorded, somewhere between 250 and 300.”
Let’s leave aside the nonsense that is “IQ” for a moment and recall instead that Sidis lived a remarkable life, wrote beautifully, and was jailed under the Sedition Act of 1918 for his 1919 participation in a socialist May Day parade, was a WWI conscientious objector, and was threatened by his family with involuntary committal to an “insane asylum” for his politics.
He created a constructed language called “Vendergood,” wrote books of mathematics and history and public transit and social theory, and called himself a “peridromophile” (someone who’s really into trains!). He also patented a leap-year-friendly perpetual rotary calendar.
The Internet Archive also has a selection of Sidis’s works.
Download the free PDF e-books William James Sidis here. [Holy Books]
(Thanks, Hans Henrik!)