The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1910-02-18
BOYS OF HISTORY COMPARED
All Except laCaulay Showed Special Ability in Math-
enaiCS Instances Of Boys Having Universal Genius,

sion everybody gasped opeamouth-
ed. did you eve, hear of anything
like that" and privately looked up
what the fourth dimension was. TAX
ing this ejac~ iation not as a mere eX-
preston of a state of stupetaction,
hut Literally as a request Tor informa-
ton the answer is that such a feat
has very seldom, If ever, been
equaled There is no doubt that the
hoy Sidis stands very near the top
of the list of prodisies For he is not
a mere mathematical prodigy. speci-
mems of which occur in every CEN
iury. His mind is mavelously de-
veloped on every SIDE, and that is
what does not ofteu happen
The majority OF children who are
gifted with extraordinary precocity
run to mathematics And il is notice
able that even If they are not con-
fined to mathematics they shine in
that subject. Macauiey is perhaps
the only case O. precOcious child
who mad no Gift for figures. and he
went so far as to fail in his esamina-
tons on that account CuriOuSly
enough. Sidis, although he is At pres
ent more remarkable in mathematics
than in any other subjects. was back
ward in it for number cf years. al
though backward, in connection
with this wonderful bow. is meant
only that he must nave been all of
seven or eight before ne had got up
10 the point most men Attain just be-
fore leaving college
So he stands not with the class of
child prodigies like Zerah Colburn.
who early mastered mathematics and
never ranked higher than an inter-
esting freak of nature. but with that
limited group of wonder children to
whom by some strange law scholarly
genius flowers in babyhood - men
like Pascal. Sir William Rowan. Ham
ilton, Ampere, Gauss. and Macaulev.
The list does not take long to tell
Nature is not often in 4 mood as gen
erous as that which must fill her
when she sends those creatures from
another world 10 let MS have a glimpse
of how things MAJ be if we are good
and are allowed to so to a higher
planet before we die.
Blaise Pascal is. of course. the
bright and shining example of a mar
velous boy. Like Sidis. an only son.
educated by his talented father. he
was purposely kept from developing
the evident bent of his mind toward
mathematics and turned as far as pos
sible to languages and literature. He
made remarkable progress. but fig
ures continued to interest him more
than declensions.
He asked for definition Of gaom-
etry, and was told that it consisted
Of drawing line, and defining their
relation to one another. He got a
hit of chalk and descended 10 the Gel
lar where he worked in secret for a
long time. One day. when the boy
was twelve years old. his father went
to the cellar and found him deep in
chalk circles and triangles. and what
not He showed, when questioned.
thar he had evolved for himself the
whole theory of geometry and had
worked out its principles as far as the
thirty-third proposition OF Euclid. He
was at that moment seeking to prove
that the sum of the angles of tri-
ugle eQualed two right angles.
All this, with absolutely no help
of any kind. and so little knowledge
Of the vocabulary of mathematics
tnat he called circles rounds" and
lines bars" Not even Sidis' lecture
on the fourth dimension can equal
this working ont by child OF twelve
Of the theory OF mathematics as the
worlds greatest minds had painstak-
irgly put it together with centuries of
effort.
A. the age of twelve. roo. the
young Pascal wrote treatise on
acoustics. suggested by the fact that
when pewter dish was struck vi. h
knife the resulting sound could be
stopped by pressing the finger against
the dish. A little later he made elab-
crate calculating machines At SIX
teen he wrote a treatise on comic see
tions which Descartes declared the
work of master
Ampere. who left his name to the
science of electricity. was another
child genius. Al the age of three he
had taught himself to count with the
aid of pebbles and had found out for
himself a good many theories of ar
ithmetic, At this age he became very
i'll and was for three days denied food.
Al the end Of the fast he was given
biscuit. but instead OF eating it he
broke it up into pieces TO count with,
an operation he considered more in
teresting
He read everything with ayidity.
His mind did not run in one channel
and he welcomed every volume thar
came in his way. When he was ten
or twelve years old he went 10 a lib
rary to ask for the works of a certain
author. The librarian told him. in
Amusement. that the books were in
Latin. The boy went home chaerined.
for he did not know Latin. being a
sickly child, and held back from
books as far as possible. but after six
weeks he appeared again and told the
librarian he had learned to read the
books now.
Ampere is one of the few child
prodigies who seems to have been