QUICKER THAN EINSTEIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 March 1935, Page 5

QUICKER THAN EINSTEIN

SEVEN-YEAR-OLD’S POWERS. A boy of seven and a-half has the' most highly-developed brain the world , has ever known, and he is astonish- ■ ing British educationists and doctors I with the wide range of his mental! powers, says tho ‘Sunday Chronicle.’| His intelligence quotient is said to. be higher than that of Professor Ein-| stein. His name is Arthur Greenwood,) but. his parents and teachers are reluctant. to see him become known as a, prodigy. Tho boy is of Jewish parentage. His father is a teacher and his mother was one before her marriage He is now in the Brooklyn Ethical Culture School. Mrs. Henry Neumann. head of the school, told a Sunday Chronicle' reporter recently that he came from the Guidance Bureau of the Board of Education, where he had revealed an intelligence comparable to that of a boy of sixteen. Arthur astonished his examiners further by arriving at the difficult system -.•-•liet-f-hv intelligence quotients are d. I. rmilied. In tho course of a test he was asked to give in his own words the thought expressed in a sixline passage which was read to him md whi< h was intended for “superior adults.” This was the child's, reply: “The general mediocrity of life prevents it from being radically unjust.” Tiie lad, too. shows an uncanny sense of music. Once, after hearing a tunc on the radio, he sat down at a piano and devised a system of numerical quotation which competent

musicians have examined and have declared practicable. Dr. Augusta Alpert, the psychologist at. the school, who airanged for tho boy's transfer from a public school to a special grolip, stated that ho was a large baby, but did not walk until he was fourteen months and never talked until he was twenty months old. But when he began to talk he did it intelligently and grammatically, choosing his sentences well and using qualifying clauses. He began at two to discuss topics far beyond the. scope of the average child. Ho learned numbers while still a baby, and at two learned to read without instruction and by employing lettered bricks and other childrens toys.

Dr. Alpert says that in other respects the hoy is normal. He dislikes fights and arguments, lucidly observing. "As a rule they are needless and pointless, since nothing is settled by them.” He is unskilled at all games requiring the use of his hands, anti if he is unable to win at anything he shows a tendency to cry. At school he is surrounded by children of his own age. and no effort is being made to set him apart from the rest.

After luncheon an hour in devotedi to story-telling, ami here the boy re-, veals his superiority. His stories aroj clear and mature, lie recently told the class of a trip he made with hifd parents to Washington, and/conclud-. cd with an accurate description of| tho city's street plan and its abstruse< svr.tetn of street numbering.

There is nothing unusual in the child’s physical development, according to Dr. Alpert, who said that his high intelligence rating was not bal-

anced by an equally high physical rating. The child is evidently overcoming a tendency to clumsiness in using his fingers, but he still exhibits no greater skill in games than would be expected of a boy of his age. The chief desire of Arthur’s teachers is to equalise his intellectual development as far as possible, so ho is not allowed to associate with older children. It is definitely established that even now life could enter a university and hold his own intellectually, but his teachers consider that such a step would ruin him for ever. The hoy has been seen and photographed in the classroom, but it would be impossible to tell from tho group photograph which is the child who possesses tho most highly-de-veloped brain ever known. When the facts were put before a leading West End doctor he confessed himself dumbfounded by tho child’s precocity. "Nothing in the history of medical science approaches this human phenomena,” he said. "Certainly we have had no parallel in Briilish records."