Tell me about the most brilliant person you've ever known

In My Humble Opinion
1

Smart people are a dime a dozen. Mensa “geniuses” abound. But truly brilliant people are another story. When I was a high school junior, a kid materialized from nowhere, took a seat in our honors math class, and proceeded to blow us away. We had many strong math students in that class, but this kid kicked ass, took names and humbled everyone. I vaguely recall a particularly difficult problem that no one could work out one day. The Kid entered the classroom late, saw the problem on the wall, and did his Russell “Brilliant Mind” Crowe shtick in about two seconds flat. The teacher returned the next day with several more advanced problems. He worked them all out almost instantly. In his head. It was so bizarre, we thought it was a gag. Nope.

I talked to him one day during lunch. He came from a down-on-its-luck family and had been unrooted from school to school for several years, often missing classes for weeks on end. He was small, meek, humble, and had no more (and perhaps less) formal education than we, yet was a natural in every way.

A few weeks later, he was suddenly gone. We never heard from him again. I recently Googled his name. Nada.
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2

I’m impressed by the brilliance of the Chief Engineer at the radio station where I work. He’s been there more than 20 years. He supervised the construction of the building we’re in, with regard to how the wiring went in and where. He installed, configured and calibrated every piece of equipment in the facility. He knows how it all works, and what you can do with each type of device. He can build electronic equipment, including one-of-a-kind items that fulfill some need we have. He is a computer scientist and a whiz on the test bench. He is in charge of the satellite transmission facilities. He maintains about a dozen separate transmitters around the state. He is in charge of Emergency Alert System tests and equipment for a large region of the state. He has installed remote facilities at several locations in town, and can arrange a microwave relay remote from anywhere and make it work. He knows where every wire comes from and where it goes, and how to get any sound source from anywhere to anywhere else. He designed the method by which all the phones in the building are connected, and can navigate the nether regions of the voice-automated phone system. And these are only a portion of his duties! You can go to this guy and ask him anything and he’ll have an answer for you. Impressive doesn’t really describe it.

3

In high school, we would often have extra curricular academic competitions that you could sign up for. They were held during regular class time, so you’d leave your regularly scheduled class to go write them. There was this one kid who’d sign up for all the tests a couple of grade levels above his own, wander into the room, scribble furiously for fifteen minutes, then quietly leave while everyone else was still on the first question, feeling utterly inadequate.

Funny thing was, he never did at all well on the tests, but I, oops, I mean he got out of a hell of a lot of classes. Brilliant!

4

I don’t really know this person well, just like a passing work acquaintance thing. He is a professor in the computer science department, and works on some abstract higher math computer science thing. Clearly, if I myself were more brilliant, I could describe it better.

Anyway, his office looks like the bridge of a federation starship, chock full o’ computers. About four out of five days a week, he comes into the office, sits in his chair … and sits back and closes his eyes. He’s doing his computer work, only in his head. Apparently he composes everything in his head first. After a few days of this, he sits at the computer and regurgitates all the information, without making any corrections or anything, because he already made all the revisions in his head. In his head! And it’s a lot of information, because it takes him a few hours to type it all out. I find this to be a thing of great marvel.

5

My childhood best friend is absolutely brilliant. She played violin, and was invited to solo with a symphony orchestra by the time she was 10. She spoke French like a native, from the time she was about 4. When she was 16, she applied for and received some federal grant to spend the summer at a university in another state to do chemistry research about possible cancer treatments. She just excelled at everything. And she was pretty and nice, too.

The last I heard, she was working at a radio station in Alaska. Doing what, I can’t imagine. She was also about to start graduate school in two totally unrelated subjects, like English Lit and Physics, or something like that.

6

I had the very good fortune to work for an attorney that was what I came to call “scary smart.” His expertise was in environmental regulation and administrative law, and his grasp of extremely complex issues was phenomenal. He was as equally well-versed in physics, chemistry, engineering, and math as he was in law. Plus, he wrote beautifully, spoke 5 languages, and had very, very refined tastes. He had the added bonus of being able to related to nearly everyone, regardless of their intellect. He was as comfortable working with EPA regulators, Supreme Court justices, as he was with the cleaning crew (who loved him - he was as neat as a pin). Many are the times I sat in on meetings with him and a client or another attorney and the information just flowed out of him. It was really amazing.

Last I heard he had taken a sabbatical from environmental regulation and was working on war crimes issues in the Hague.

7

I met my childhood friend in grade 5 on my first day in a new school. I took the only seat available, which was at the back of the class, next to this kid who looked average and unremarkable in every way. Not long into the day, the teacher, Mrs. Adelman, collected homework and when she came by his desk to pick it up he told her he didn’t do it. She really lost her shit and started yelling at him for not having it ready. I gathered it wasn’t the first time he didn’t bother doing his homework. He calmly took it for some time and when she threatened to have him sent to the principal and have him suspended he suddenly stood up and loundly announced, “Fuck You Mrs. Adelman!” and stormed out of the class. I nearly fell out of my chair. The kid on the other side of me, who was balancing on the back to legs of his chair most of the morning, actually did fall off the chair and tipping his disk over with a loud crash.

Right then and there I thought the kid had guts.

I befriended him in the school yard. Not long after that and realized he was smart as all get out but only excelled at things he was interested in. I also discovered that his parents just recently divorced and he was taking that very hard. In grade 8/9 he got the Timex zx80(?) personal computer and not long after that he wrote an assembler program for it. :eek: That was just the start of his self taught computer expertise.

In grade 10, not long after his father suddenly passed away, he dropped out. He finished highschool in adult education. Kind of worked aimlessly in blue collar jobs for a while.

By the time I was done my Comp.Sci degree (he inspired me to like computers) he was working in a warehouse of a local computer retailer. He must have liked the place because 8 years later, he was director or the entire IT division of this fairly large company. No degree. Just his wits.

Despite my ears in IT he’s always kicked my butt at computing technologies.

We’re still friends though we don’t see one another as often as we’d like because of geographic distances.

8

I knew/know a really weird cat.

He was a math guy, never went to class. If he did go to class, he’d sit there and write out paragraphs from Car & Driver magazine, verbatim.

He could draw the map of the US, which was cool.

Anyway, he didn’t do crap for course work in grad school. His first year or so, he solved some problem in discrete mathematics, and submitted it to a journal. Turns out two professors the year before had won a national “Young Researcher Award” for solving the same thing. (don’t think for a second he knew that and just reproduced it).

We had an assignment once, and for an “easy” problem one had to employ a well-known, famous, big, theorem that was devloped in the 50s. At least well-known to anyone who went to class. HE solved the problem by actually going back and proving the theorem himself, and using his result.

From those two things, you might be dubious, but, he published a lot of interesting stuff while in Grad School and eventually was invited to apply to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (yes, where “Rusell Crowe” was) and did a post-doc there, working with some famous mathematicians – famous in their fields, anyway.

He was also quite a social misfit, never been laid, never got drunk, not athletic. Very difficult to converse with, lots of physical “tics”.

Last I knew, he had another post-doc. He’s very disorganized. He could never get a teaching position. Never. I don’t know what kind of job will ever suit him. He can’t show up on time, can’t sit still, can’t communicate. Perhaps a place like “Bell Labs” or something could be a fit for him.

9

I’ve worked with lots of smart people. But a few stand out.

One was a research engineer who worked for a contractor. Tall, soft-spoken, white, 30ish. We had all met him briefly when he was introduced to the team.

A few days later, he came by my desk and pointed to a big combinatorics problem that I had had on my board for a few days. He politely told me that he thought it collapsed to a simple closed form that evaluated to pi/4 (or some such).

I thought he was making a wild guess, but when I checked his solution, I realized he was right.

This incident at first made me wonder if he was a schemer who worked hard at making himself look smart. But as I got to know him, I learned he was the opposite – he was very humble, and if anything, downplayed how smart he was. He often solved similar problems in his head.

I heard recently he left the company he worked for and started his own company, and I would be surprised if he’s not doing really well.

10

Samuel R. Delany. He has the ability to come up with the most incredible insights about just about any subject. And he just tosses them off, as though he’s mentioning a minor matter and it’s no big deal. Listen to him for 20 minutes and you’ll come out with something you never considered before.

Second is Darrel Schweitzer. He’s much the same way, though limited to science fiction/fantasy literature. For instance, he makes a good case that The Eye of Argon is not as terrible as most people think: many of the typos seems to have been added by Bjo Trimble when she retyped the thing, and, though the prose is deep purple, there is a story lurking there, especially considering the author was in his teens when he wrote it. A few years ago, he made the prediction that 12 Monkeys would be the last we see of intelligent science fiction in the movies, and damn if he wasn’t right (please don’t bring up “Gattaca” or, God forbid, “The Matrix” – they are both laughably stupid).

11

That would have to be my grandfather.

He had no formal education passed the age of 11. He left school after his father died at a young age to work for the family. This was during the depression, so times were tight and good work was hard to find. He became a master carpenter by the age of 15, and quickly earned his stock in trade as a mechanical engineer.

Then a war happened. He had no desire to be drafted into the infantry, so he took this as an opportunity to fulfill his long time dream of flying. The day his draft card arrived, he snuck out the back way and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. His background in mechanical engineering gave him and edge in understanding aircraft dynamics, so he took to it rather quickly, and perhaps with a bit too much zeal for his own good. He always had a problem with authority, which led to numerous confrontations with his superior officers and a considerable amount of reprisal. He regularly deviated from his flight plans to test the limits of his aircraft, even going so far as to wander into Mexico for an emergency landing when his elevators locked up. Mexican authorities kindly invited him and his copilot to stay the night in prison for his unscheduled landing. Despite all of this, he earned his wings.

He had trained to fly P-38’s, but he volunteered to pilot B-17’s seeing as how heavy losses in bomber squadrons left good pilots in short supply. I believe the standard tour of duty for a B-17 pilot was 24 missions before you rotate back to the states. Seeing as how he had a fiancee waiting for him back home, this sounded like a good deal. He ran out of luck on his 19th bombing run, though. A collision with an ME-109 tore off most of his starboard wing, and the plain lost control. Only half of a crew of 10 made it out. To make a long story short, he spent the next two years in a German POW camp.

During his stay in Europe he became fluent in 8 languages. When his camp was liberated and he finally got back home, he married his fiancee and set about returning to his life as an engineer. He managed to land a relatively menial job with a small company that came to be known as Dupont. Over the years, he picked up a great deal of knowledge regarding chemical engineering. He never quite got the chance to work in the labs, but managed to eventually land a position that even PhD’s were fighting to get.

Growing up, I could ask him anything. It seemed as though there was no question that could stump him. Whatever curious fascination I had developed at the time was always nurtured by his seemingly never-ending supply of knowledge. He didn’t always give me direct answers, but rather he encouraged me to find them out on my own. He often made a game out of it. He would also make a habit of speaking to me in different languages to keep me on my toes, which helped me gain a conversational knowledge of Italian, French, German, and Russian.

The man is easily the most brilliant person I’ve ever known. It seemed as though there was no problem insurmountable to him. Unfortunately though, he developed late-onset Alzheimer’s last year. It’s painful having to watch him leave us a piece at a time. A man like that deserves to keep the knowledge he has earned right up until the end. I only hope that I’ll be able to take care of some of it for him when he’s gone.

12

Well one example is a boy I sat next to on the bus in high school. Always hilarious but never flaunted his intellect in any way. I thought he was more or less at my level. Bright but not an exotic. I wasn’t in any of his classes so had no real basis to guage since all we talked about was - actually I don’t remember what the hell we talked about but it wasn’t Kant and I think most of it would fall under the rubric of teenage shit.

Comes the SATs. I knew I’d done well and felt pretty pleased with myself. I figured somewhere in the 700s or so. I ask him how he did. He waved his hand and said. “Ah. I got one wrong. It was a stupid mistake.” That’s right. He was saying he got *just * one wrong. My jaw dropped. It wasn’t just that he was saying he got all but one right. It’s that he KNEW he got all but one right. And he KNEW which one he got wrong and why. Plus he wasn’t one to brag or bullshit or fuck with you (at least not that I was ever smart enough to pick up).

Now I can never verify for sure that he got ONLY one wrong. But he did get double 800s. I tend to believe him.

13

I know a couple brilliant people.

My Dad is simply amazing. He has a PHD(4.o GPA) in math. His specialty is statistics. When it comes to hard science, math and computers he is scary smart. I got him a Rubik’s Cube for Fathers Day when they first came out. He looked at it for about 30 seconds, said “Oh, that’s group theory” and solved it. So much for that present. He does that with everything that involves math. For a while I tried to find a puzzle he couldn’t solve. I gave up. The truely amazing thing, to me anyway, is that he can pick up stuff almost instantly. He is always about 3 steps ahead of everyone. His only problem, as far as I can tell, is he can’t spell worth a damn.

Luba, a friend of the family, has a PHD in physics. My Dad once took me aside and told me that Luba was the absolute best in her field which was impact physics. My Dad doesn’t say those kinds of things lightly. I haven’t seen Luba in years but she is extremely well read and very sharp.

Dick, my Dads best friend, has a PHD in physics, was a professor at BYU then started his own rent a physics company. Dick, like my Dad, understands math and physics stuff so well that he knows what is going just about instantly.

Jeanie, Dicks better half, has a PHD in Education(I think it is education) and knows more than anyone I’ve ever met. When I was growing up we’d go on camping trips and sometimes play Trivial Persuit. The whole goal of everyone was to be on Jeanies team. Note, when I say everyone I mean Sam, Lee, Dick, Luba, Gail, Larry and Phylis all of whom have PHDs. (Sam=Astrophysics, Lee=Music, Luba=Physics, Gail=Computer Science, Larry=Physics, Phylis=Music). Jeanie rocks. She knows and understands a gret deal about hard sciences but she also knows alot on the humanities side.

The rest of the people I meantioned are all brilliant in their fields, all PHDs with high GPAs. Sam wrote a very important astorphysics program back in the early 90’s. Regretablly he passed away from a brain tumor in 1994 IIRC. Gail, last I heard, was working on the worlds fastest computer system(think teraflops). I believe he was doing design work on it but I am not sure. Larry worked for years at a national lab and is now retired. Phylis taught school IIRC. Jeanie was the highest un-elected person in the state school system. I don’t know what happened to Luba, she had to go live with her ill mother and kind of drifted away.

I also worked for, indirectly, Matt Korn who was AOL’s VP of operations. Extermely smart guy. He wasn’t my boss, or my bosses boss, but I did see him alot and went to meetings with the guy. He just knew his stuff inside and out. He knew the detail of the systems at AOL extremely well. That is a pretty hard feat because AOL has so many systems. He really impressed me.

Slee