ABSTRACT
The establishment of the field of psychology and the impact of psychological constructs and methodologies on disciplines such as education was nearly immediate. Many myths and misunderstandings endured regarding prodigious youth, and these misconceptions provided a wealth of speculation and eventually contributed to the first research questions in a new field of empirical study. William James Sidis, who was the child of Russian immigrants, was born in 1898. Nearly 200 years after the stories of Christian circulated, the public consumption of stories regarding precocious youth remained in demand. Boris orchestrated the media's documentation of William's progress, evidenced by the various newspaper and magazine articles, which the younger Sidis despised. And due to his father's continued promotion, the media remained actively interested in William's progress. With few like-minded peers, William found adult life as difficult but for different reasons and the media continued to document his life, except misfortune seemed to plague him, including an arrest in 1919.
