The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-01-30
BRIGHTEST BOY IN THE WORLD.

Most ot us nowadays stumble through life with just enough mental arithmetic to figure out show, much change the landlord will give us back out of salary check. When we want to figure interest we do it Chinese fashion, the ten fingers of two Ily-white hands. About all the Latin we know is "spiritus frumenti" and "habeas corpus" The only Greek we recognize is the word "Marathon." and we wouldn't know that If we saw 1t with It's Athenian makeup on. On other things we're just shaky We aren't sure that calculus isn't chemf cal, and that metaphysics hasn't got something to do with the pill business.
 But at Tufts College, in Massachusetts. Doy wiH graduate next June at the age of fourteen, and we will all have to take of cur mortarboard caps to him. He Is Norbert Wiener, the of q Harvard professor. This remarkable boy in Coium- bia, Missouri, November 26, 1894. He could repeat the alphabet at the age of eleven months, could read and write at three years and at the age of eight he< was fitted for college in mathematics. philosophy, modern languages, and the sciences. It required less than three years of schooling, after donning short trousers, for him prepare for coI Icge. Boys seldom do this in less than ten or eleven years; usually it requires an even dozen, and often longer.
 When Norbert Wiener entered Tufts in the au- tumn of 1906, he had gone further in chemistry and philosophy than the average senior. He was re- cuired to take entrance examinations mathe- matics among them. in which he was found to be far in advance of the freshman class. So, as a freshman, he did upperclass work in the theory Of equations and in determnants, while in philosophy it was found necessary to place him in class by himself. He had read Spencer, Haeckel Darwin, Huxley, and many others. Now he has read Locke, Hobbes, and other English philosophers; he has translated Homer and several plays of Aeschylus, well similar amount of Latin. In mathema- tics he has delved into the Galois Theory of equa- tions, and has completed diherential and integral calculus. He will continue this branch this year. and will study the philosophies of Leibntz, Spinoza, and Kant. In Greek. he will read Herodotus and So phocles; the rest of his time will be taken up by biology and organic chemistry. In June. 1909. he will have completed the regular fouryear course in three years, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts before he has reached the age of fifteen But tie work he has covered will equal the amount usual 1y completed by a candidate for the degree of Doc ter of Philosophy
 In the autumn following his graduation at Tufts College, he will enter the Harvard Graduate School where he will elect work in higher mathematics with supplementary course in biology tEemistry After receiving the doctors degree at seventeen an age when many students are not yet contemplat ing the entrance examinations-he will spend two three years in Germany and France. devoting himself to philosophy and science That is at an age when the average boy has still two years of work ahead of him for his hachelor's degree. young Wiener will be doing advanced scientific work among the graybearded savants of German university.
 Prof Leo Wiener, of the department of Slavic languages at Harvard. is of Russian parentage; the boy's mother is native of Missouri The other children of the family do not differ from other boys and girls of their ages. Apart from the fact that his capacity for learning is phenomenal. Norbert Wiener is like other boys. His physical develop Ment is excellent; he is a good tennis player and expert swimmer. He is tall boy, and strict vegetarian. His head is normal in size, but his blazing, black eyes almost uhcanny in their power. Personally he oh. mathematics his favorite study. Philosophy he calls "hs fairyland