There is no genius free from some tincture of madness. - Lucius Anaeus Seneca
Plus there’s also Asperger’s Syndrome – many of the people who have it also have very high IQs, but in absence of a diagnosis they may seem odd to the general public.
My history professor’s first husband was a genius, literally. If I remember correctly what she told us about him, he went through the U. of Chicago on full scholarship, only attended classes to take the tests, graduated #1, and became (an aid?) to a judge on the Supreme Court. She says that he thought very differently. For instance, she would talk to him, and then leave the room, and she seriously doubts he would ever even think about her if she were not standing directly infront of him. Once, they were discussing about having kids, and he said he wanted to have some because “He wanted to see if they would be normal like you (my teacher) or smart like himself, and he didn’t know if he could love an average child.”
A very weird fellow, from what all she’s told us.
JRDelirious, whether intentionally or not, makes a very crucial distinction about Asperger’s Syndrome I’d like to re-note about OCD as well: a significant proportion of sufferers have high IQs. This does not follow that a significant proportion of those with high IQ have Asperger’s or OCD or (fill in the blank). We would do well to remember the end quote of the link boofy_bloke provided: you don’t have to be mad to be a genius but it helps. A significant majority of those we deem highly intelligent are quite sane people going about their daily lives.
(Oh and after some research on Turing earlier tonight, he did bike with an alarm clock strapped to his waist to time his rides and a gas mask over his head to stop his hay fever from kicking in. Eccentric yet still within the realm of logic, I suppose. He also killed himself by eating an apple dipped in cyanide.)
Is an obsession with promptness characteristic of very high-IQ people? Tesla was one…the waiter at Delmonico’s restaurant in NYC could set his watch by him (Tesla)-the guiy would come through the door each evening precisely at 7:30 PM. I also had a college prof. ( a genius) who stared his class precisely at 10:30 AM-and ended precisely 45 minutes later!
How about Pauling and his obession with vitamin C?
Hughes’ addiction to morphine probably made his OCD markedly worse. IIRC, he only hired Mormons as his immediate servants feeling that they were morally above reproach, lived cleaner lives than most (and were less likely to contaminate him), and were generally superior employees. He also watched “Ice Station Zebra” over and over and over again.
The smartest person I’ve ever known was an attorney I worked for. He was also extremely ordinary in most every other aspect of his life. Brilliant, and no doubt a genius, but not weird in the slightest.
My spouse had contact with many of the scientists who worked on the most secret of the USGov’t projects of the 40’s.
All brilliant in their field and almost all of them were in a world of their own, oblivious to all around them.
I personally knew and worked for one who was down to earth and a great guy in all respects. Had a brain like a computer and a memory
for details, fact, figures, etc.
“Beware of the Cog”
Source: “Bodyguard of Lies”
Turing would run the six miles to the office with an alarm clock tied to his waist to time himself.
His mother and he listened to a children’s radio story time religiously, talking on the phone during it to “be together”.
He got obsessed that someone was using his teacup and started devoting a remarkable amount of time to creating an unbeatable cipher lock for it. He was then told he was taking a vacation, like it or not. He went off and climbed a mountain in Scotland, IIRC. He was better after that, at least able to continue his real work for the war decryption service.
I had a roommate who could write you a somewhat passable letter in 8 languages, and would lie in bed reading latin because he liked it. He had OCD, and would not touch anything that he wasn’t sure where it had been, if at all possible. Leaving the house often needed a thorough handwashing after touching shoes and other unclean things.
He also went off his Prozac against advice, and when he came out of the house with a butcher knife, demanding to know where another guy had gone to the movies, where everyone was going to be killed after being hypnotized by the movie, he ended up in the USC mental ward.
He’s better now, at least functional.
And ralph124c would refuse to proofread his posts!
It’s the more convenient Coup, only three minutes to prepare - just add one and a half pints of water and bring to the boil - ideal for the Banana Republic in a hurry.
I, for one, drink a lot of beer.
I also drink many beers
It makes you wonder… since so many farms have chicken coups, just what are those chickens up to?
I thought this excerpt from Bill Bryson’s book Mother Tongue would be of interest:
“But an even more prolific contributor [to the original Oxford English Dictionary] was an American expatriate named Dr. W.C. Minor, a man of immense erudition who provided from his private library the etymologies of tens of thousands of words. When Murray [the man in charge of the OED project] invited him to a gathering of the dictionary’s contributors, he learned, to his considerable surprise, that Dr. Minor could not attend for the unfortunate reason that he was an inmate at Broadmoor, a hospital for the criminally insane, and not sufficiently in possession of his faculties to be allowed out. It appears that during the U.S. Civil War, having suffered an attack of sunstroke, Dr. Minor developed a persecution mania, believing he was being pursued by Irishmen. After a stay in an asylum he was considered cured and undertook, in 1871, a visit to England. But one night while walking in London his mania returned and he shot dead an innocent stranger whose misfortune it was to have been walking behind the crazed American. Clearly Dr. Minor’s madness was not incompatible with scholarship. In one year alone, he made 12,000 contributions to the OED from the private library he built up at Broadmoor.”