When William James Sidis was barely 3 years old, the story goes, he taught himself a language: Latin. By the time William (aka Billy) was 6, he had added Russian, French, German, Hebrew, Armenian and ...

In 1909 and 1910 one could scarcely pick up a newspaper that had not carried stories of the incredible mental exploits of William James Sidis, the 11-year-old son of a Harvard psychology professor.

Within two years after William James Sidis’ father gave him alphabet blocks, he was writing French and English on a typewriter. He was then four. At five, employing a formula of his own devising, he ...