“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
– Albert Einstein?
Introduction
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| Nature Vs. Nurture |
Who is a genius? There are no easy answers. But, we generally understand that a genius is someone who displays exceptional creative or intellectual powers. People have always been curious about what makes a genius tick. So, when Einstein died, his brain was sent for a laboratory investigation in the hope of finding something extraordinary in his grey matter. But the brain of Albert Einstein weighed just 1230 grams – less than what the brains of we dullards would weigh.
Researchers seem to agree that to become a genius, one must have exceptionally high levels of general intelligence, for which the measure is Intelligence Quotient (IQ). The IQ of an average human being is 100 and that of the average college graduate is about 120. But the IQ of Albert Einstein was 150. Michael Angelo, Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes had IQ scores of 180 each. Galileo had an IQ of 185. Clearly, IQ counts. But the question is whether the presence of high levels of IQ in itself would enable people become geniuses.
This post is an attempt to answer that question by examining the lives of two people blessed with exceptionally high levels of IQ. These people are Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer.
This post is an attempt to answer that question by examining the lives of two people blessed with exceptionally high levels of IQ. These people are Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer.
Christopher Michael Langan
“Tonight the mob takes on their fiercest competition yet. Meet Chris Langan, who many call the smartest man in America. The average person has an IQ of one hundred, Einstein one fifty. Chris has an IQ of one ninety-five….will his king size cranium be enough to take down the mob for one million dollars?” These were the words of the presenter of the fifth episode of the American television quiz show, ‘1 vs. 100’. The special invitee to each episode of the show has to match his wit with the gallery of a hundred people (called the ‘mob’). The guest could win a maximum of one million US dollars by beating the ‘mob’ by correctly answering more questions. In this episode, Chris Langan was that special invitee.
The show began. Chris faced the questions put to him with confidence and answered them without circling around or searching for the right words. When his winning reached $250,000, Chris pondered over the situation. He could pocket the sum of $250,000 and simply quit. Else, he could continue risking a wrong answer to the next question and lose all he earned. He said, “I will take the cash”.
Chris was born in 1952. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy shipping executive. He never saw his father. His mother married another man and divorced. When Chris was five, she married again. This time her husband was a mean, hard-drinking tyrant. Chris says. “Living with him was like ten years of boot camp, only at boot camp you don’t get the shit beaten out of you every day with a garrison belt, and in boot camp you’re not living in abject poverty”.
But Chris was dazzlingly bright. He began talking at six months of age and reading when he was just three. He skipped kindergarten through second grade and started his schooling in the third grade. At the age of five, he began questioning his grandfather about the existence of God… Although his IQ as a child was never tested, his teachers believed that he was a prodigy. He was so smart academically that his teachers did not know what to teach him. So he taught himself advanced maths, physics, philosophy, Latin and Greek. His classmates were envious…
His sadistic stepfather relished beating up the children. So, Chris always went to school with body covered with welts. “The fresh ones were pink and red, the older ones black and blue, the oldest green and yellow”. This provided the perfect alibi for his classmates to ridicule and bully him. By the time he was twelve, he started weightlifting to build his body. Before long, he became the tough guy. And other kids learned to leave him alone.
One morning when he was fourteen, Chris woke up to a flash of white light, followed by intense pain across his eyes. His drunken stepfather had punched Chris with a garrison belt wrapped around his fist. Chris simply lost his head, jumped out of his bed, flew at his stepfather, knocked him across the room and pushed him out on to the front yard. Outside he kicked and punched him to his fill. His rage over, Chris ordered his stepfather to get out and be gone forever. And he was gone…
Langan rarely attended his classes. Still, he would ace all his tests. When he finished high school, he got a scholarship to Reed College. But he lost the scholarship after the first semester since his mother forgot to turn in his financial aid form. He left Reed College and went back to Bozeman, Montana. For a year and half he worked in construction and as a fire fighter in forest services. Then he enrolled at Montana State University to study maths and philosophy.
In the middle of the Montana winter, his car broke down. He had no money to get it back on the road. Without a car, it was impossible for him to reach the university twenty kilometers away for the 8 a.m. sessions. So, he sought a transfer to the afternoon sessions. The university denied his request. And Chris Langan decided that he was done with the US higher education system …
We might wonder why the university authorities had so mindlessly dismissed the simple request for a session change from such a promising youngster. The fundamental issue was his lack of tact in dealing with people and situations. Here is an instance revealing it. Chris Langan was exceptionally good in maths. So he questioned his Calculus teacher at Montana about the way he took classes. He chased the teacher down to his office and asked, “Why are you teaching this way? Why do you think this practice relevant to calculus?” The teacher turned to him and said coldly, “Some people simply do not have the intellectual power to be mathematicians”. In his entire conversation with his calculus teacher, he miserably failed to communicate the truth that he was a maths wizard.
We might wonder why the university authorities had so mindlessly dismissed the simple request for a session change from such a promising youngster. The fundamental issue was his lack of tact in dealing with people and situations. Here is an instance revealing it. Chris Langan was exceptionally good in maths. So he questioned his Calculus teacher at Montana about the way he took classes. He chased the teacher down to his office and asked, “Why are you teaching this way? Why do you think this practice relevant to calculus?” The teacher turned to him and said coldly, “Some people simply do not have the intellectual power to be mathematicians”. In his entire conversation with his calculus teacher, he miserably failed to communicate the truth that he was a maths wizard.
Chris Langan ended up in life with just one and a half years of university education. He worked in construction. He took factory jobs and minor civil service jobs. One freezing winter, he worked on a clam boat on Long Island. Then he became a bouncer (whose job was to throw out troublemakers) in a bar in Long Island. It remained his primary source of living during much of his adult years…
Julius Robert Oppenheimer
The year was 1939. The world learnt to its shock that Nazi Germany had succeeded in unravelling the secrets of splitting a Uranium atom. Everyone feared that Germany would soon produce an atomic bomb. Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, scientists who had fled Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy respectively, were then living in the US. They thought that the US President should know about the breakthrough achieved by Germany. Fermi travelled to Washington and met top government officials. Nobody was impressed. Einstein wrote to the President. Eventually the US administration approved a project to design and produce an atomic bomb.
To begin with, the work on the project remained in the various university campuses. But in due course, the project came under the control of the US military. In 1941, it received the code name ‘The Manhattan Project’. Soon, everyone was in a tearing hurry to make the first atomic bomb a reality. The main assembly plant for the atom bomb was built at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Robert Oppenheimer was the Director of this most critical plant in the in the making of the bomb.
Oppenheimer was born the son of a wealthy businessman. He grew up in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Manhattan, travelling in a chauffeur driven luxury car to the countryside on weekends and spending his summers in Europe with his grandfather. He had his education in prestigious institutions that groomed students “to reform the world”.
Oppenheimer too was a whiz-kid with intelligence comparable to that of Chris Langan. He was doing lab experiments by the third grade and studying physics and chemistry by the fifth grade. After finishing his undergraduate studies at Harvard he sailed to England and joined Cambridge University for his Post Graduate study and research.
Oppenheimer went to Cambridge hoping to work under Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford. But that did not happen. Oppenheimer became depressed. He was also jealous of the success of some of the people around him. He particularly disliked his tutor Patrick Blackett. Blackett was a handsome man with great social charm. He was also outstandingly brilliant as a scientist. (Blackett would win Nobel Prize in Physics in 1948)
Oppenheimer loved theoretical Physics. But Blackette, wanted him to get into experimental Physics. Oppenheimer hated experimental physics. He became angry and annoyed. In the fall of 1925, Oppenheimer left a “poisoned apple” on his tutor’s desk. The apple was laced with chemicals (possibly cyanide) from the laboratory. Blackett felt something was amiss. He reported the matter to the university authorities.
His influential father lobbied the University. It did not press criminal charges. Oppenheimer was put into probation and was ordered to have regular sessions with a prominent London psychiatrist. After a while, the psychiatrist concluded that Oppenheimer was a hopeless case and that “further analysis would do more harm than good“.
Years went by. Leslie Groves, the Army General in charge of the Manhattan Project, was scouting for the right talent to lead the project. Oppenheimer had very little chance. He was just 38 years old and was junior to many to whom he would be the boss. He was a theoretical physicist while the project needed experimenters and engineers. With many communists as friends, his political ideologies were suspect. He had no administrative experience. As someone had put it, “He could not run a hamburger stand”. Above all, he had a history of psychiatric care and an attempted murder.
General Groves was an engineer by training and an MIT graduate. Oppenheimer knew that he had to charm the engineer in the soldier to bring him around to his own views. The General would later say that Oppenheimer was the first scientist he had interviewed who grasped the idea that practical solutions to several inter-disciplinary problems to be implemented for the mission to succeed. The General kept nodding in agreement to the proposal made by Oppenheimer for setting up a central laboratory “where we would begin to come to grips with chemical, metallurgical, engineering and ordnance problems that had so far received no considerations”.
Oppenheimer knew that Groves was the one person who could give him one of the most prestigious and important jobs of the century. So he simply turned on all his charm and brilliance on Groves. The General simply fell for it. He later told a reporter, “He’s a genius, a real genius.”
The Manhattan Project succeeded in producing atomic bombs. The first bombs from its assembly line were dropped over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki causing massive death and devastation never before or later seen in history. Japan surrendered. World War II ended. Oppenheimer was celebrated as the key brain behind the bomb. He and the world moved on…
Can Intelligence Be Injurious To Life?
Both Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer were prodigals with the potential ‘to reform the world’. Both were born embedded with more or less similar genetic software carrying the capacity to achieve greatness. Yet, one simply dropped out of college while the other succeeded in grabbing what he wanted. Does this mean that IQ power alone does not make people geniuses?
In 2000, Paul Ehrlich, a biology professor at Stanford University, published a book on human evolution with the title, ‘Human Natures’. This book was an attempt to answer the question whether humans are the product of their genes or of their experiences. Ehrlich argues that more than genetic coding, human nature is influenced by cultural conditioning and environmental factors.
In an interview given to New York Times in Oct 2000, Ehrlich says, “Look at Chang and Eng, the Siamese twins who were joined at the chest. They had virtually identical genotypes, and you cannot imagine two people being raised in a more similar environment. Yet one was dominant, the other submissive, one was a drunk, the other sober, and they even sometimes voted for opposite parties in elections…Their story tells us right off the bat that genes don’t control you”.
According to Ehrlich, each individual is the product the interaction between the genetic data he inherits by birth (DNA) and the ecology with which he interacts in life. Even very small differences in the cultural and environmental factors might escalate into very different outcomes for the individual.
When it came to such cultural and environmental factors, Oppenheimer had tremendous advantages. He was born into a wealthy family to educated parents, had his education at top class institutions that groomed him to think as someone capable of ‘reforming the world’. He received attention and guidance from his parents. He had constant social exposures, which made him comfortable with people. He also acquired a sense of entitlement. So, it was no big deal for someone educated in Harvard and Cambridge to be confident and comfortable in his interaction with an Army General who was just an MIT graduate.
Chris Langan never had this advantage. His mother was estranged from her own family. She had four sons, each with a different father. Chris never saw his father who probably died in Mexico. One of his stepfathers was murdered, and another killed himself. He grew up in a home dominated by a drunken and sadistic stepfather. Above all, the family lived in abject poverty. His family never grasped the importance of the gift of high intelligence in Langan. Perhaps, his mother failed to file his scholarship papers because she was ignorant of the process.
Langan had no occasion to learn to respect authority. His learning was to distrust and resent authority. He did not know how to negotiate effectively or turn situations to his advantage. He did not have the skill to use exceptional levels of IQ to his advantage. Without it, the power of his IQ could only hurt him. And that is exactly what happened in his life.
Langan had no occasion to learn to respect authority. His learning was to distrust and resent authority. He did not know how to negotiate effectively or turn situations to his advantage. He did not have the skill to use exceptional levels of IQ to his advantage. Without it, the power of his IQ could only hurt him. And that is exactly what happened in his life.
Let me now conclude. IQ is a measure of innate ability, although its heritability is put at around 50% by most estimates. We tend to think that people born with exceptionally high IQ would eventually become exceedingly successful people in their lives. If this thinking is true, we would have been reading a completely different story on the life of Chris Langan.
People apparently need something beyond the sheer power of intellect in order to succeed in life. Psychologist Robert Sternberg calls this essential ingredient of success as ‘Practical Intelligence’, which, according to him includes things like “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.” Practical Intelligence is about knowing how to do something without necessarily knowing why you know it or being able to explain it.
Oppenheimer was blessed with a very high level of general IQ and the benefit of an ecology that taught him ‘Practical Intelligence’. Christopher Langan never had the advantage of the ecology to learn the skill of ‘Practical Intelligence’. That made the difference. And that had one him in.
In the ultimate analysis, it might not wrong to conclude that Chris was a man ruined by his prodigious IQ. And to some, intelligence can indeed be injurious to life…
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Postscript:
The primary inspiration for this article comes from the book ‘Outliers – the Story of Success’ by the international bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell.
It's an interesting article on the role of IQ in success in life, but I believe its title is misleading. Intelligence is one of the many attributes a person has, and the use he puts it to depends on many factors, external and internal. That's why we talk about the need to possess wisdom, to have adequate EQ, or to develop self control, for instance,
At another level, we must remember that every person is much more than the sum of his or her observable attributes. Yes, I'm referring to the spiritual dimension of life, and the laws that is subject to, including the concept that almost everything is predetermined, which has been staring the scientists studying the quantum world in the eye for a while now.
@HP
Thank you for your valuable observations.
Yes Sir. I admit that the title is rather misleading. To be honest, I tried some that were more appropriate for the content. But I was not happy with its power to attract reader attention.
I fully agree that people are much more than the sum of their observable attributes. 'Practical Intelligence' covers many dimensions of intelligence including Emotional, Spiritual and Social Intelligence. I am planning to discuss these in a later post.
I once again thank you for sparing the time to read and comment.
Regards,
gkutty
Very interesting and informative article that surely might attract ambitious youngsters.why not you extend your service to schools
@Saramma Thomas Thank you for reading and commenting. As regards your suggestion, perhaps, there are already too many 'motivational speakers' around… May be, it is an option that could be considered if the opportunity come knocking… Regards.