In existographies, Abraham P. Sperling (1912-c.2000) was an American mathematician and psychologist generally noted as an early commentator of the IQ of William Sidis.
Overview
In the 1940s, Sperling was the director of New York city’s Aptitude Testing Institute.
Quotes | By
The following are quotes by Sperling:
“I have tested more than five thousand people. Of all the mentally superior individuals that I have seen, nobody begins to approach the intellect and perspicacity of William Sidis. According to my computations, he easily had an IQ between 250 and 300.”
— Abraham Sperling (c.1941) [1]
“Sidis easily had an IQ between 250 and 300. I have never heard of the existence of anybody with such an I.Q. I would honestly say that he was the most prodigious intellect of our entire generation.”
— Abraham Sperling (c.1941) (Ѻ)
“Young Sidis was truly an intellectual phenomenon. His childhood achievements ranked with those of John Mill, Thomas Macaulay, and Johann Goethe. By the time William Sidis was two he could read English and, at four he was typing original work in French. At the age of five he had devised a formula whereby he could name the day of the week for any given historical date. At eight he projected a new logarithms table based on the number twelve. He entered Harvard at the age of twelve and graduated *** laude before he was sixteen.”
— Abraham Sperling (1946), “A Story of Genius” [2]
“Helena Sidis told me that a few years before his death [c.1941], her brother Bill took an intelligence test with a psychologist. His score was the very highest that had ever been obtained. In terms of I.Q., the psychologist related that the figure would be between 250 and 300.”
— Abraham Sperling (1946), “A Story of Genius” [2]
References
1. Wallace, Amy. (1986). The Prodigy: a Biography of William James Sidis, America's Greatest Child Prodigy (pg. 283). Dutton Adult.
2. Sperling, Abraham. (1946). “A Story of Genius” (pgs. 322-339), in Psychology for the Millions, F. Fell.
External links
● Abraham Paul Sperling (1912-) – WorldCat Identities.
