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by ioblomov
874 days ago
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I’d assert that, rather than being fictional, it’s just exceedingly rare. While Feynman, Einstein, von Neumann, et. al. are indisputably geniuses, they all got relevant graduate degrees before doing their best work. The self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, however, was invited to Cambridge University on the merits of notebooks he developed in isolation after reading a few mathematical texts… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan |
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The original claim was that a genius should be able to easily and quickly attain mastery of any topic, given a grounding in the basics. Like, you give Mr. Super Genius IQ a book on quantum chemistry and the next day they’re putting things together so cleverly they are on the precipice of new discoveries.
Feynman actually did this a couple of times! But I think that just shows the “unreasonable usefulness” of mathematics, as well as his own spirit of curiosity. (And at least one time that we know of, he faked it by reading a colleague’s research before he presented it. Not to take credit, but just as a prank, so he could interrupt and predict every conclusion before the presenter finished.)