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LINGUIST

William James Sidis

1898 - 1944

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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 (up from 41 in 2019). William James Sidis is the 4th most popular linguist (up from 5th in 2019), the 177th most popular biography from United States (up from 236th 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)

  • 72.22

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 43

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 8.33

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 2.96

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of William James Sidis by language


Among LINGUISTS

Among linguists, William James Sidis ranks 4 out of 161Before him are Ferdinand de Saussure, Noam Chomsky, and Max Müller. After him are Roman Jakobson, Mahmud al-Kashgari, Mesrop Mashtots, Patanjali, Pāṇini, Franz Bopp, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and Edward Sapir.

Most Popular Linguists in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1898, William James Sidis ranks 13Before him are Golda Meir, M. C. Escher, Enzo Ferrari, Zhou Enlai, George Gershwin, and Umm Kulthum. After him are Herbert Marcuse, Liu Shaoqi, C. S. Lewis, Tamara de Lempicka, Trofim Lysenko, and Alexander Calder. Among people deceased in 1944, William James Sidis ranks 10Before him are Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Romain Rolland, Claus von Stauffenberg, Abdulmejid II, and Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom. After him are Richard Sorge, Günther von Kluge, Reza Shah, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Alexis Carrel.

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 177 out of 18,182Before him are Louis Sullivan (1856), Denzel Washington (1954), Herman Melville (1819), Herbert Hoover (1874), Harvey Weinstein (1952), and Jane Fonda (1937). After him are Tom Cruise (1962), David Lynch (1946), Pearl S. Buck (1892), Sigourney Weaver (1949), James Monroe (1758), and Samuel Colt (1814).

Among LINGUISTS In United States

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