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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mathematical John Stuart Mill,
By Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (Paperback)
This is the story of the childhood and youth of a genius. Norbert Wiener who would go on to become an important mathematician and one of the principal developers of communication theory, and his own specific discipline 'cybernetics' tells here the story of his most unusual childhood and youth. At the center is his relation to his father Leo Wiener who was a Professor of Slavic Languages, and an extraordinarily ambitious person. He pushed his son from an early age in much the same way that John Mill pushed John Stuart Mill. In the process he was often cruel. "He would begin the discussion in an easy, conversational tone. This lasted exactly until I made the first mathematical mistake. Then the gentle and loving father was replaced by the avenger of the blood.... Father was raging, I was weeping, and my mother did her best to defend me, although hers was a losing battle." The father pushed Wiener so well that he enrolled in Tufts University at the age of eleven finished four years later with a degree in Mathmematics. The father was also a publicity - hound who publicized his son the genius, and claimed it had nothing to do with any genetic quality or special gift of his son, but rather was solely attributable to his own educational methods. The father too saw too it that the son had a family life, and selected one of his students to be his son's wife, and practical daily life manager.Wiener despite all this went on to become a distinguished MIT professor of Mathematics, an original genius and a highly respected teacher. This autobiography is one of two and there is another work by Wiener covering his later years. However anyone who wishes to know the life- in full should also look at the biographical literature, that contains much about the life of genius he himself did not apparently wish to tell.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
From insider perspective,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Ex-prodigy: my childhood and youth (Hardcover)
This book is written in a calm and thoughtful style. It gives an insider perspective into the world of a young and very talented person, who has to develop his ability to cope both with his own abilities and with the world around him. This book is great for the parents of gifted children. They may also learn how the cognitive abilities may develop ahead of manipulative abilities ( i.e a child may be able to prove a theorem, but unable to memorize the multiplication table).The book also confirms the old truth that the life of an independent thinker is not an easy one.
3 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ex-prodigy. My Childhood andYouth,
By
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This review is from: Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (Paperback)
It's an excellent book telling about how it's to grow up as a prodigy and thereby living a life betwwen older in the schools and at the same age when out playing. And besides allso becaurse the books is about living 100 years ago telling about how it was then, and the meating with many famous science person living then. Allso telling about other prodigys problems.
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