This is William James Sidis, considered the smartest man in history.


 With an IQ between 250 and 300, he entered Harvard at just 11 years old, the youngest student at the university. However, like the life of any genius, it had a sad ending.


He spent his final years avoiding his parents, in love with a woman he couldn't speak to, as he'd never had a relationship. Harassed by the press and questioned by society, he refused to enlist in the army during World War II, declared himself an atheist and leftist, and participated in controversial political marches.


On one of these marches, he met Martha Foley, an Irish activist with whom he fell in love. Attracted by his apparent solitude, Foley approached him, breaking through Sidis's shyness and striking up a conversation, even though he, in the presence of a woman, couldn't speak. Sidis found in Martha what he had been denied by his rigid upbringing at home and enjoyed a brief period of happiness.


However, his father forbade him to continue seeing her, and although Sidis complied, he also stopped visiting his father. He locked himself in his apartment until he suffered a stroke and died on July 17, 1944. He was found a week later, along with a photograph of Martha Foley among his belongings... continue reading 

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