Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 306, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1911 — FORM PRODIGY CLUB [ARTICLE]

FORM PRODIGY CLUB

Young ttentat Wonders of Harvard the Founders. Master Sid it, a Ten-Year-Old Expert _ en “Fourth Dimension,” One of the Cambridge, Mass.—A prodigy club has just been founded In Harvard, where there have been for the past year several beys who entered possessed of extraordinary mental attainments. The two best known of these are the sons of Prof. Weiner of Harvard and Dr. Boris Stdls, the eugenic expert of Boston. The sons of both these men were trained under specially prepared schedules of study, which together with a native ability has shown them to be extraordinary types of mental precocity. Dr. Boris Sidis asserted that he could produce a prodigy from any American child of average intelligence under his system of development. His son William J. Sidis, when ten years old, passed 4nto the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because the age limit at Harvard kept him from entering. When he was a freshman at Harvard young Sidis lectured on the mathematical problem of the fourth dimension. Among the learned professors in the special audience wbb the late William James. Another prodigy is fourteen-year-old Norbert Welner. who is in Harvard's graduate school, having taken bis degree at Tufts college. Besides being a linguist he is a mathematician of ability. The curious features that have been notice Ts"'t¥elf"¥ag'erness to put aside their studies for simple games that delight young children. Ab the) have both been exploited by the magazines, where their pictures have appeared, these two boys a few days ago called on some others in

Harvard, who are quite as gifted, and the following conversation, savoring of the nursery, took place. “Have you been written up?” asked young Weiner of the newest genius. “Not yet, but they came and took my picture the other day.” “Oh, that’s nothing. I had a whole article about myself written by my lather,” said young Sidis. “Let’s found a Harvard Prodigy Club,” suggested the boy bachelor of arts, Weiner. \ And so the tour child wonders have formed Harvard’s first and only prodigy club. The latest addition to the club is Adolph A. Berle of the freshman class, son of the Rev. A. A. Berle of the Shawmut Congregational church In Boston.