The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1910-02-16
WONDERFUL BOYS OF HISTORY COMPARED
All Except Macallay Showed Special Ability in Math-
Gmad@- Instances Of Boys Having universal Genius"

ANop - &>"
lam James Sidis, of Harvard, aged
eleven, lectured to a select circle OF
mathematicians on the fourth dimen-
sion everybody gasped open-mouth-
ed. Did you ever 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 stupefactlon,
but Literally as a request for informa-
ton the answer is that such a leaf
has very seldom, if ever, beer
equaled. There is no doubt that the
boy Sidis stands very near the top
Of the list of prodigies. For he is moi
a mere mathematical prodigy, specl-
mems of which occur in every CEN
fury. His mind is marvelously de-
veloped on every side, and that is
what does not often happen.
The majority Of children who are
gifted with extraordinary %precocity
run to mathematics. And it is notice
able that even if they are not con-
fined to mathematics, they shine in
that subject. Macauley is perhaps
the only case oil a precocious child
who mad no gift for figures, and he
went so far as to fail in his e1amina-
tions 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 a number of years. al
though Backward" in connection
with this wonderful boy, is meant
only that he must have been all OF
seven or eight before he had got up
to 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 Macauley.
The list does not take long to tell.
Nature is not often in a mood as gen.
erous as that which must fill her
when she sends those creatures from
another world to let US have a glimpse
of how things may be if we are good
and are allowed to go 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 a definition OF geom-
etry, and was told that it consisted
Of drawing lines and defining their
relation to one another. He got a
bit of chalk and descended to the eel
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,
that he had evolved for himself the
whole theory of geometry and had
worked out it's 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 a tri-
angle equaled two right angles.
All this, with absolutely no help
of any kind, and so little knowledge
of the vocabulary Of mathematics
that he called circles rounds" and
lines bars" Not even Sidis' lecture
on the fourth dimension a equal
this working out by a child of twelve
OF the theory of mathematics as the
worlds greatest minds had painstak-
ingly put it together with centuries OF
effort.
At the age of twelve, too, the
young Pascal wrote a treatise on
acoustics, suggested by the fact that
when a pewter dish was struck with
a 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 sec.
tons which Descartes declared the
work of a master.
Ampere, who left his nam to the
science of electricity, was another
child genius. Al the age of three he
had taught himself to count with the
ai3 of pebbles and had found out fol
himself a good many theories of ar.
ithmetic. At this age he became very
Ill and was for three days denied food
AT the end of the fast he was giver
a 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 avidity
His mind did not run in n channe
and he welcomed every volume that
came in his way. When he vas ter
or twelve years old he went to a lib
rary to ask for the works of a certain
author. The librarian told him, ir
amazement, that the books we're il
Latin. The boy went home chagrined
for he did not know Latin, being
sickly child, and held back from