Of Genius, Wealth and Poverty

We live in a world that worships money - and accords both respect and awe to those able to accumulate vast quantities of this magical stuff. Many, indeed, confuse "wealthy", with "brilliant". Yet, is this conflation a necessary truth?

There are many ways to become wealthy and not all of them involve great brilliance - in fact, most of them involve little more than doing what someone else has done, before, with a better marketing plan in place. I could say, "Look at Microsoft.", but I won't. In short, being rich does not mean being a genius. Nor does its corrollary apply: being poor does not mean one is dumb.

This latter point is essential to grasp. You see, I have recently received a letter from an American pointing out that, in her country, the poor are discounted on the issue of giftedness: no-one believes that a gifted child could emerge from a poor family - and so they are often overlooked. This is a very odd take on the issue of giftedness and shows that those who think so are unaware that wealth and IQ are not strongly correlated. There are rich bright people, yes - but there are also dumb rich people - and poor bright people - and poor dumb people (perhaps not the best combination, that one).

Giftedness is not a measure of wealth - it is a measure of mind - and great minds may emerge in the most unpromising of circumstances. History can teach us much here. I have already written of Carl Friedrich Gauss - a great child prodigy and a great genius level mathematician. What I did not stress enough, perhaps, was that his family were a very poor one. His father was a stone mason - a manual worker - and had the limited resources one expects of manual workers in most societies. Yet, this did not stop the young Gauss from being born a prodigy, and turning out to be the "greatest mathematician of his Age", according to many of his peers.

Another great mathematician, born in poverty, was Srinavasa Ramanujan. Born in 1887 in abject circumstances, he nursed a brilliance for mathematics by his own private efforts. He only emerged into prominence on writing a letter to G.H Hardy, the Cambridge mathematician, enclosing 120 mathematical statements of his own devising. Hardy, rather open-mindedly, invited him to Cambridge and the great young genius, was recognized. We all have something to thank him for. His work (the partition theory) is behind the operations of automatic teller machines (ATMs) and without his ideas, we would not be able to get a hold of our funds, so readily.

Both of these great men, were born poor - and both became great mathematical geniuses. Their poverty did not prevent them from being great. There are many such cases throughout history. Poverty does not connote stupidity - and wealth does not connote genius (I could bore you with cases of stupid, rich people but the living ones would sue and the dead ones are too uninteresting to bother with.)

So, to my American reader, I would like to send assurance that gifted people can, do and have emerged from poor backgrounds - and would like to urge those in America, who seek to identify gifted people, to be more open-minded in their pursuit of them. Do not assume intelligence in a rich kid - or dumbness in a poor one. Have an open mind when evaluating each and every one. For intelligence, creativity and genius, may emerge from any background, rich or poor.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and one month, and Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

Some of history's greatest thinkers began life as child prodigies. What is interesting, to me, is that not everyone seems to know this.

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was a classic and remarkable case of child prodigy, emerging from an unpromising background. He was born on the 30th April 1777 in Brunswick, Germany. Neither of his parents were educated - indeed, his father was a stone mason. So, the young Gauss was very much on his own, in his early education. Yet, he was not without success. By the age of three he had somehow taught himself reading and arithmetic to a proficient degree.

One day, his father was adding up some figures, on paper, concerning the family finances. The young Gauss, three, peered over at his father's work and pointed out an arithmetical error - which Gauss had checked in his head.

In time, Gauss came to the attention of the Duke of Brunswick and, as was the custom of the day - and a good custom it was too - Gauss was to receive the patronage and support of the Duke of Brunswick, throughout much of his career. The Duke awarded Gauss a fellowship to the Collegium Carolinum, which he attended from 1792 to 1795 and thence he went to the University of Gottingen, which he attended from 1795 to 1798.

It was while at the University that Gauss began the train of mathematical breakthroughs that were to characterize his work and life. In 1796, he proved that any polygon with a number of sides equal to a Fermat prime may be constructed with a compass and straightedge. This was a major mathematical discovery since the problem of construction of such shapes had bedevilled mathematicians since the Ancient Greeks. It took the young Gauss to finally solve it.

Admission to University seems to have electrified Gauss into creative action. The construction problem was solved on March 30, 1796. A few days later, on April 8th, he proved the Quadratic Reciprocity law, which allowed one to determine the solvability of any quadratic function in modular arithmetic.

Modular arithmetic? Oh, he invented that, too. Then he came up with the Prime Number Theorem about the distribution of primes amongst all integers, on May 31st. On July 1oth he discovered that any positive integer is the sum of, at most, three triangular numbers. On October 1st, he published some work on the number of solutions of polynomials with coefficients in finite fields.

This outburst of creativity was not a solitary occurrence in Gauss' life. He went on to make lifelong contributions in many fields. I wrote in detail of that one year to give you some idea of what he was capable of. In 1799, he proved the fundamental theorem of algebra. In 1801, he published his book on number theory, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, a magnum opus which he had actually completed at the age of 21, though he delayed publishing (this was a chronic tendency of his, failing to publish until, in his perfectionism, he was satisfied with his work. Had he published all that was later to be found in his notebooks, it is estimated that he would have advanced mathematics fifty years, single-handedly. However, in delaying publication, other mathematicians often got to publish Gaussian results before he did, though he had reached the same conclusions decades ahead of them).

In that same year, 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the planetoid Ceres. He tracked it for a few months, across three degrees of sky, but was unable to locate it again. (It had been lost behind the glare of the sun.) The astronomers of the time were unable to calculate an orbit sufficiently well on so little information to be able to predict the path of an object. Gauss, however, just 23 at the time, took on the project. In three months of work, he revolutionized how orbital calculations were performed, devising an approach which still stands as the foundation of such calculations today. He accurately stated where the object could be expected to be seen in the night sky - and Ceres was duly found again. This single piece of work catapulted Gauss to fame - and was later key in securing him the lifelong position of astronomer at Gottingen.

Gauss' achievement with Ceres puzzled many, for it seemed a feat beyond possibility. He was asked how he had done such an intricate calculation. He replied: "I used logarithms." When asked how he had looked up so many logarithms in so short a time, he dumbfounded them, by saying: "Who needs to look them up? I calculated them in my head."

Thus Gauss carried into his adult life the childhood ability as a mental calculator that he had shown at the age of three.

Gauss put his mental calculation to another practical use through performing a geodesic survey of the state of Hanover. In so doing, he developed what we know today as the Normal Distribution - or more properly, Gaussian distribution.

In the 1820s he collaborated with the physicist Wilhelm Weber and contributed much to the areas of optics, acoustics, mechanics and magnetism. Indeed, in 1833 he invented the telegraph, which was to later revolutionize communications that century.

Subsequent to his death on February 23rd, 1855, his brain was taken from his skull and weighed. It was, perhaps not surprisingly, significantly heavier than usual, at 1,492 grams and, the examiner stated that it was "highly and deeply convoluted". It was theorized that this unusual manifestation of the brain accounted for his genius.

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, began life as a self-educated child prodigy, born of uneducated parents, who could not, therefore, assist him but, by the end of his days, he was accounted, by many, as "the greatest mathematician since antiquity".

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, seven years and six months, a scientific child prodigy, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, or Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)