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The term genius is originally a Latin term from Roman mythology meaning 'spirit', either the internal driving force within
all living things, or a specific spirit, or demon with supernatural powers. A similar term from Arabic legend is jinnee.
This paper is about people with exceptional mental abilities. For the cartoon, see Genius (cartoon).
Modern usage
In modern usage, a 'genius' is a person with distinguished mental prowess. This can manifest either as a
foremost intellect, or as a creative talent. The term also applies to one who is a polymath, or someone skilled in many mental areas. The term does specifically apply to
mental rather than athletic skills, although it is also used to denote the possession of a superior talent in any field; eg, one
may be said to have a genius for golf.
Gifted
Geniuses come gifted with phenomenal brilliance, and are often very sensitive emotionally. Artistic geniuses usually start out
as prodigies, but differentiate themselves from the rest through great originality and/or inspiration. Intellectual geniuses
usually have crisp, clear-eyed visions of given situations, in which interpretation is unnecessary - the facts just hit them, and
they build or act on the basis of those facts, usually with tremendous energy. Here too, accomplished geniuses in intellectual
fields start out in many cases as prodigies, gifted with superior memory, pattern recognition or just understanding.
Prodigies are simply talented virtuosos, more like circus freaks who do not necessarily feel controlled by any impulse to
build or create. Geniuses are creators. They make huge original leaps in their field, rather than just extending the previous
body of work in that field. To distinguish between a prodigy, a genius must also have
created or brought in something new in an established field, usually, the sciences, math, literature, chess, art, and music.
Greats
These names are synonmous with the word Genius.
- Leonardo da Vinci (Child art Prodigy, artist, inventor,
engineer, poet)
- Michaelangelo (Child art Prodigy, Sculpter, painter, poet, architect.)*
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Child music Prodigy, composer)
- Alexander the Great (Conqueror, statesman, conquered all
of the then known world.)
- William Shakespeare (playwright)
- Albert Einstein (theoretical physicist)
- Ludwig van Beethoven (composer)
Others
Some widely called geniuses are:
A to L
- Aristotle (philosopher,
logician, tutor and advisor to Alexander the Great)
- Archimedes (mathematician)
- Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)
- José Raúl Capablanca (chess master)
- Noam Chomsky (Linguist, philosopher, psychologist, U.S foreign policy
critic)
- Charles Darwin (biologist)
- René Descartes (mathematician, philosopher)
- Thomas Alva Edison (inventor)
- Paul Erdös (mathematician)
- Bobby Fischer (chess master)
- John Forbes Nash (mathematician)
- Benjamin Franklin (inventor, diplomat, political scientist)
- Sigmund Freud (psychologist)
- Buckminster Fuller (philosopher, architect, inventor)
- Evariste Galois (mathematician)
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (mathematician)
- Murray Gell-Mann (physicist)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (writer, poet)
- Vincent van Gogh (painter)
- Alexander Hamilton, (Child Prodigy, statesman, 1st U.S secretary of Treasury, political philosopher, journalist)
- Stephen Hawking (cosmologist)
- Thomas Jefferson, (statesman, political philosopher)
- James Joyce (writer)
M to Z
- Isaac Newton (physicist)
- John von Neumann (physicist, mathematician, computer scientist)
- Blaise Pascal ( Math Prodigy, mathematician, philosopher)
- Plato (philosopher)
- Srinivasa Ramanujan (mathematician)
- Bertrand Russell (philosopher, logician, mathematician)
- William James Sidis (physicist, mathematician, cosmologist)
- Alan Turing (math prodigy,
mathematician)
- Nikola Tesla (electrical engineer, physicist)
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (philosopher, logician)
- Frank Lloyd Wright (architect)
Significant works
Among history's most significant works of Genius are —
- The complete works of Mozart
- Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel
- Albert Einstein's physical theories
- William Shakespeare's works
References
- Harold Bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, Warner Books
- James Gleick, Genius : The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Vintage
- Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius,
Quill
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