LINGUIST

William James Sidis

1898 - 1944

Photo of William James Sidis

Icon of person William James Sidis

William James Sidis (; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills, for which he was active as a mathematician, linguist, historian, and author (whose works were published covertly due to never using his real name). He wrote the book The Animate and the Inanimate, published in 1925 (written around 1920), in which he speculated about the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics. His father, the psychiatrist Boris Sidis, raised his son according to certain principles with the desire for his son to be gifted. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William James Sidis has received more than 4,541,213 page views. His biography is available in 43 different languages on Wikipedia. William James Sidis is the 6th most popular linguist (down from 4th in 2019), the 169th most popular biography from United States (up from 177th in 2019) and the 2nd most popular American Linguist.

William James Sidis is most famous for being a child prodigy who had an IQ of 250.

Memorability Metrics

  • 4.5M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 72.59

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 43

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 9.26

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 2.78

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of William James Sidis by language

Over the past year William James Sidis has had the most page views in the with 693,166 views, followed by Spanish (236,543), and Russian (94,364). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Malagasy (138.10%), Simple English (133.33%), and Catalan (116.58%)

Among LINGUISTS

Among linguists, William James Sidis ranks 6 out of 214. Before him are Ferdinand de Saussure, Noam Chomsky, Max Müller, Mahmud al-Kashgari, and Antoine Meillet. After him are Roman Jakobson, Noah Webster, Edgar de Wahl, Mesrop Mashtots, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and Franz Bopp.

Most Popular Linguists in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1898, William James Sidis ranks 12. Before him are Federico García Lorca, Enzo Ferrari, Sergei Eisenstein, Umm Kulthum, M. C. Escher, and Zhou Enlai. After him are Stefania Turkewich, Herbert Marcuse, George Gershwin, C. S. Lewis, Liu Shaoqi, and Gunnar Myrdal. Among people deceased in 1944, William James Sidis ranks 10. Before him are Erwin Rommel, Wassily Kandinsky, Romain Rolland, Claus von Stauffenberg, Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, and Abdulmejid II. After him are Reza Shah, Günther von Kluge, Richard Sorge, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Charles Glover Barkla, and Michael Wittmann.

Others Born in 1898

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Others Deceased in 1944

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In United States

Among people born in United States, William James Sidis ranks 169 out of 20,380. Before him are Jackson Pollock (1912), Olympias (-375), Barry Barish (1936), Sharon Tate (1943), Amelia Earhart (1897), and Paul Newman (1925). After him are Judy Garland (1922), Samuel L. Jackson (1948), Sitting Bull (1831), Tom Cruise (1962), John Travolta (1954), and Linus Pauling (1901).

Others born in United States

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Among LINGUISTS In United States

Among linguists born in United States, William James Sidis ranks 2. Before him are Noam Chomsky (1928). After him are Noah Webster (1758), Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897), Leonard Bloomfield (1887), Joseph Greenberg (1915), George Lakoff (1941), Joshua Fishman (1926), William Labov (1927), Morris Swadesh (1909), Stephen Krashen (1941), and George Kingsley Zipf (1902).

American born Linguists

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