My Brilliant Brain

At 38 years old, Susan Polgar has reached heights that few women have ever equalled in the chess world. Despite the common assumption that men’s brains are better at understanding spatial relationships, giving them an advantage in games such as chess, Susan went on to become the world’s first grandmaster. Susan’s remarkable abilities have earned her the label of ‘genius’, but her psychologist father, László Polgar, believed that genius was “not born, but made”. Noting that even Mozart received tutelage from his father at a very early age, Polgar set about teaching chess to the five-year-old Susan after she happened upon a chess set in their home. “My father believed that the potential of children was not used optimally,” says Susan.

Psychologist Darold Treffert of the University of Wisconsin has been studying savants for over 40 years. “A savant by definition,” he explains, “is somebody who has a mental handicap of some sort with... an island of genius.” The difference between a savant and a genius, therefore, is the disability. For George Widener, this disability is autism – a condition that leads to awkwardness and social isolation. At the age of seven, George spotted a calendar and was intrigued by “the magic of the rows of numbers.” Since then, he has found comfort in numbers, compiling lists of figures and calendars spanning centuries. He can now identify the day of the week from any given date.

Marc Yu is a seven-year-old concert pianist with a repertoire of some 40 classical pieces. At the age of two, Marc heard a rendition of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ at a birthday party, pulled himself up to a piano and played it back flawlessly. A year later, he was playing Beethoven from memory. But are his remarkable abilities based on hard work or was he simply born with a brilliant brain? Developmental psychologist Professor Ellen Winner explains that people have always been fascinated with child geniuses because they are doing things at “the wrong age”. “They’re not supposed to be doing things so advanced,” she explains, “so they shock us.”