When nuclear physicist Edward Teller was a small child, his family was concerned because he was still not talking when he was three years old. After trying his best to get the little boy to talk, his grandfather warned the parents that they should be prepared for the possibility that they had a retarded child. While all this may seem amusing in retrospect, there is nothing at all amusing about this situation to families currently going through the same phase with a similar child.
Children talk late for all sorts of reasons, including deafness, mental retardation, and autism.
But there is also a whole set of silent but often brilliant children with other distinctive characteristics. Dr. Teller is not even the only famous nuclear physicist to talk late. So did Richard Reynman and Albert Einstein. Most late-talkers are male but distinguished mathematician Julia Robinson also talked late. These people are more than isolated curiosities.