Genius

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).

Table of contents

1 Modern usage 2 Gifted 3 Greats 4 Others 4.1 A to L 4.2 M to Z 5 Significant works 6 References

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)\n*Michaelangelo (Child art prodigy, Sculpter, painter, poet, architect.)*\n*Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Child music prodigy, composer)\n*Alexander the Great (Conqueror, statesman, conquered all of the then known world.)\n*William Shakespeare (playwright)\n*Albert Einstein (theoretical physicist)\n*Ludwig van Beethoven (composer)

Others

Some widely called geniuses are:

A to L

• Aristotle (philosopher, logician, tutor and advisor to Alexander the Great)\n*Archimedes (mathematician)\n*Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)\n*José Raúl Capablanca (chess master)\n*Noam Chomsky (Linguist, philosopher, psychologist, U.S foreign policy critic)\n*Charles Darwin (biologist)\n*René Descartes (mathematician, philosopher)\n*Thomas Alva Edison (inventor, businessman)\n*Paul Erdös (mathematician)\n*Leonhard Euler (mathematician)\n*Bobby Fischer (chess master)\n*John Forbes Nash (mathematician)\n*Benjamin Franklin (inventor, diplomat, political scientist)\n*Sigmund Freud (psychologist)\n*Buckminster Fuller (philosopher, architect, inventor)\n*Evariste Galois (mathematician)\n*Carl Friedrich Gauss (mathematician)\n*Murray Gell-Mann (physicist)\n*Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (writer, poet)\n*Vincent van Gogh (painter)\n*Alexander Hamilton, (Child prodigy, statesman, 1st U.S secretary of Treasury, political philosopher, journalist)\n*Stephen Hawking (cosmologist)\n*Thomas Jefferson, (statesman, political philosopher)\n*James Joyce (writer)

M to Z

• Isaac Newton (physicist)\n*John von Neumann (physicist, mathematician, computer scientist)\n*Blaise Pascal ( Math prodigy, mathematician, philosopher)\n*Plato (philosopher)\n*Srinivasa Ramanujan (mathematician)\n*Bertrand Russell (philosopher, logician, mathematician)\n*William James Sidis (physicist, mathematician, cosmologist)\n*Alan Turing (math prodigy, mathematician)\n*Nikola Tesla (electrical engineer, physicist)\n*Ludwig Wittgenstein (philosopher, logician)\n*Frank Lloyd Wright (architect)

Significant works

Among history's most significant works of Genius are —

• The complete works of Mozart\n* Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel\n* Albert Einstein's physical theories\n* William Shakespeare's works

References

• Harold Bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, Warner Books\n* James Gleick, Genius : The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Vintage\n* Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius, Quill

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