Highest human IQ ever Recorded: William James Sidis

Highest human IQ ever Recorded: William James Sidis 

Born in America in 1898, William James Sidis was a wunderkind extraordinaire, gifted with an astounding IQ estimated between 250 and 300. This polyglot went to a grammar school when he was only 6 years old and graduated just within 7 months.

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, at the age of 9, he was already a Harvard student, but since he was too young, he was advised to take a couple of years off just to give his personality some time to catch up and be on a par with his intellect. At the age of 11, he became the youngest student to have ever enrolled at the Harvard University. He graduated cum laude at the age of 16, and entered Harvard Law School at 18. As an adult, was claimed to be conversant in over forty languages and dialects.

In early 1910, Sidis' mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies. MIT professor Daniel F. Comstock predicted that Sidis would become a great mathematician and a leader in that field in the future. Sidis began taking a full-time course load in 1910 and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, on June 18, 1914, at age 16.

Shortly after graduation, he told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion. He granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald. The paper reported Sidis' vows to remain celibate and never to marry, as he said women did not appeal to him. Later he developed a strong affection for a young woman named Martha Foley. He later enrolled at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Politics and arrest: In 1919, shortly after his withdrawal from law school, Sidis was arrested for participating in a socialist May Day parade in Boston that turned violent. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison under the Sedition Act of 1918. Sidis' arrest featured prominently in newspapers, as his early graduation from Harvard had garnered considerable local celebrity status.

Sidis died in 1944 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 46. His father had died of the same malady in 1923 at age 56