The Mathematician Forced to Become a Genius

Norbert Wiener went to college at age 11 Obtained his bachelor’s at 14 His PhD from Harvard at 18. Before Norbert Wiener became known as the founder of cybernetics - the  study of how the brain talks to itself and how machines could mimic those processes - he  was first known as his father’s experiment. Leo Wiener insisted that Norbert  was born with an average mind.

But he believed that with enough  willpower and rigorous training, he could shape his son into a genius. Leo was a Russian Jew born in Białystok in present-day Poland, who sought success in America  through his extraordinary gift for languages. He could reportedly speak 30 languages well.

Despite rising to become a professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard - the first of its  kind in America - Leo longed for greater acclaim—an unfulfilled ambition  he projected onto his son. 1896 Norbert’s parents named him after a  character from a Robert Browning play. Looking back, he reflected that giving him  such an “unusual name was part and parcel of the decision which they had already made to  direct and to channel my life in every detail.

” His mother, Bertha, taught him to  read when he was three years old. Learning to read at such a young age and  the continuous strain of reading under his father’s strict supervision later  on—took a toll on Norbert’s eyesight, with serious repercussions in the years to come… Although Leo wasn’t heavily involved in his son’s education at first, his presence loomed large. Norbert recalled hearing his father work at his desk, noting that “the low timbre of the  male voice was in itself enough to scare me.

” As a child, Norbert was extremely sensitive,  easily startled—a trait exacerbated by his father’s harsh teaching methods. His parents had enrolled him in an elementary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts when  he was seven, and he skipped to the fourth grade. But he struggled with arithmetic,  finding repetitive drills tedious, so Leo pulled him out of school, deciding to  teach him algebra himself, believing it would be more intellectually stimulating.

At first, his father started lessons in a conversational tone, but, “This lasted exactly until I made the first mathematical mistake. Then the gentle  and loving father was replaced by the avenger of the blood. The first warning he gave me of  my unconscious delinquency was a very sharp and aspirated “What!

” and if I did not follow this  by coming to heel at once, he would admonish me, “Now do this again! ” By this time I was  weeping and terrified. … Father was raging, I was weeping, and my mother did her best to  defend me, although hers was a losing battle.

” Leo would scold him, calling him  a “Fool! ” or “Donkey! ” and would repeat these criticisms over dinner.

At nine years old, Norbert enrolled in high school as a special student, as his  father could no longer homeschool him due to his added responsibilities of translating  Tolstoy’s works into English in addition to his teaching duties at Harvard. Yet, no matter how busy he was, Leo Wiener ensured that Norbert  recited his lessons every evening where Success was met with a half-hearted “All  right” or “Very good, you can go and play now” but mistakes were met with a harsh reprimand. As Norbert recalled: “.

. . failure was punished, if not by blows, by words that  were not very far from blows.

” At age 11, Leo decided that Norbert should  enroll at Tufts College rather than Harvard, partly to avoid the public attention that  would come with such a young boy attending a prestigious university. He majored in math and also enjoyed chemistry and physics. But socially, he felt out of place: “I was not so much a mixture of child and man as  wholly a child for purposes of companionship and nearly completely a man for purposes of study.

” After completing his bachelor’s degree in three years, Norbert began graduate studies  in zoology at Harvard at the age of 14. He crossed paths with another famous  child prodigy, William James Sidis, whose tragic life I’ve covered in  another video linked in the description. Because of Norbert’s poor  eyesight, he struggled in the lab.

His father insisted he switch paths  and apply for a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell. He later described his time at Cornell as the “black year of my life. ” Barely a teenager among classmates in their mid-twenties, he didn’t fit in.

Following his father’s strict vegetarian diet, uncommon at the time, further set him apart. It was also during this time that Norbert made a startling discovery - that he was Jewish. “I was shocked,” he recalled.

His parents had concealed their heritage, fearing  the social and professional disadvantages that came with being part of a persecuted minority. Norbert admitted to harboring anti-Semitic feelings himself, confessing: “I could not  accept myself as a person of any value. ” These sentiments would fade with time.

Adding further injury to his sense of self, Leo publicly dismissed Norbert’s  achievements, attributing them solely to his own teaching methods. In an interview, he stated: “I am convinced that it is the training  to which we must attribute the results secured with them. It is nonsense to say, as  some people do, that Norbert and Constance and Bertha are unusually gifted children. 

They are nothing of the sort. If they know more than other children of their age, it is  because they have been trained differently. ” The public statement deeply hurt Norbert: “When this was written down in ineffaceable  printer’s ink, it had a devastating effect on me.

It declared to the public that my failures  were my own but my successes were my father’s. ” His father also tried to mold his younger  brother Fritz into a child prodigy. But Fritz’s frail health prevented him  from enduring the same rigorous training.

When Norbert’s fellowship at Columbia  wasn’t renewed, Leo intervened once more, pushing him to transfer to Harvard’s  graduate school to study philosophy. At 18 years old, Norbert graduated with a  dissertation on mathematical logic, a field then considered a branch of philosophical inquiry. He was deeply depressed during this time, describing his life as  walking through a dark tunnel.

But what came next, after Harvard, lifted him  out of his depression and shaped his future. Norbert received a fellowship to  study at the University of Cambridge, where he learned from two of the greatest  minds of his time, the philosopher, logician, and mathematician Bertrand Russell  and renowned mathematician G. H.

Hardy. During this period, he came to a profound  realization: “The effective mathematician is likely to be a powerful factor  in changing the face of society. ” Following Russell’s advice, Norbert  continued his studies in advanced mathematics at Göttingen University in  Germany under the legendary David Hilbert.

Later, he completed another fellowship at Columbia  University, though he found it less intellectually stimulating compared to his time in Europe. In 1915, Norbert returned to Harvard as a temporary instructor in a freshman  philosophy course and another in logic, surrounded by students who were his own age. Reflecting on this time, he wrote, “I was now a breadwinner in the full sense and that I had  begun to have a certain stature in my own right.

” Though he had begun to assert his independence,  his father’s influence still lingered. When Norbert struggled to find a teaching  position for the following academic year, exacerbated by the outbreak of World War I, his father insisted he look for a role  in mathematics rather than philosophy. Reluctantly, Norbert turned to a  teachers’ agency—an organization that helped educators find positions.

He found it humiliating that he couldn’t rely on academic reputation alone. He eventually became an instructor of mathematics at the University of  Maine but found the environment lacking the intellectual stimulation he craved. When America entered the world war in 1917, he hoped to serve his country and joined an  army training camp to become an officer…only to be rejected due to his poor eyesight  after struggling with firearms training.

Instead, he contributed to the war effort  as a civilian, working at the General Electric factory in Lynn, Massachusetts, as an  apprentice engineer in the turbine department. Leo believed Norbert wasn’t suited for  engineering because he was clumsy and, through his connections, helped his son  secure a position as a staff writer for Encyclopedia Americana in Albany, New York. Norbert found it refreshing, later writing that “these everyday experiences had for me  a glamour and a novelty which they would not have had for a boy of more usual bringing up.

” Just as he was settling into this new rhythm, an urgent telegram arrived from  mathematician Oswald Veblen. Veblen asked Norbert to join the ballistics staff  at the Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland. The military was developing new artillery  and ammunition that required updated range tables—charts predicting how far artillery shells  would travel at various angles of elevation.

Traditional methods of calculating these  tables were too slow for modern warfare, so skilled mathematicians were desperately needed to operate computing machines  capable of complex calculations. Surrounded by colleagues who shared his passion  for mathematics, Norbert’s enthusiasm for intellectual life was reignited. After the war, Professor Veblen informed him of a promising opportunity.

MIT was seeking mathematicians—fueled by the post-war boom in industrialization,  technological innovation, and scientific research. MIT marked the beginning of a  new chapter, one that led to his groundbreaking work on Brownian motion. In 1827, the Scottish botanist Robert Brown observed pollen grains jittering in water,  a phenomenon later explained by Einstein, who proved that their random movement resulted  from collisions with even smaller molecules.

Norbert used probability theory to mathematically  model this motion, known as the Wiener process. His model captured three defining  characteristics of Brownian motion. Random: The movement is unpredictable,  with each step determined by chance.

Continuous: The path is smooth and  unbroken despite its constant zigzagging. Time-based: The position changes as time passes, with patterns emerging over longer periods. All three behaviors occur simultaneously.

This graph depicts a one-dimensional  Wiener process, illustrating Brownian motion with its continuous,  random fluctuations over time. But this concept isn’t limited  to microscopic particles. Stock prices often resemble the unpredictable,  zigzagging path of Brownian motion.

Understanding Brownian motion helps investors  gauge a stock’s potential volatility and estimate the range of prices it may reach over time. As Norbert’s career flourished at MIT, so did his personal life. He met Margaret Engemann, a young immigrant from Germany whose brother  happened to be one of Norbert’s students.

Their connection grew, and  they eventually married. Norbert dedicated his autobiography to Margaret: "To my wife. Under whose gentle tutelage I first knew freedom.

" For a man whose childhood had been shaped by control and expectation, Margaret’s love  offered him a freedom he had never known. He spent the rest of his career at MIT,  over 40 years until he retired in 1960. Yet his time at the university  was not without moral dilemmas.

As his colleague Dirk Struik later observed: “He saw and felt things for which most of us were blind and unfeeling. I think this  was partly due to the overly strict upbringing he had as a child prodigy. ” When the U.

S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Struik recalled Wiener's reaction: “I well remember how upset he was the day after Hiroshima was bombed. When I remarked that  because of Hiroshima the war against Japan should now come to a speedy close without much  further bloodshed—a common sentiment at the time and the official justification still heard  today—he replied that the explosion signified the beginning of a new and terrifying period in human  history, in which the great powers might prove bound to push nuclear research to a destructive  potential never dreamed of before.

He also recognized and detested the racism and arrogance  displayed in using the bomb against Asians. ” Wiener spent the war predicting the flight paths  of enemy aircraft using mathematical models with feedback loops - adjusting calculations  in real time based on new information. He soon realized feedback wasn’t just a  military tool - it was a universal principle.

This insight led to his most  groundbreaking work - cybernetics. Cybernetics is the study of communication and  control in both biological and mechanical systems. It examines how systems process information,  self-regulate, and adapt to their environment through feedback loops—-where a system’s output  circles back as input to tweak its behavior.

A thermostat senses the room’s temperature,  compares it to the desired setting, and adjusts heating or cooling to maintain balance. In the human body, the brain receives sensory input, processes it, and  directs functions like breathing. In robots and AI, feedback loops  help machines learn from their actions and improve performance over time.

What made Wiener’s insight revolutionary was that he realized both machines and living things  rely on communication and control to function. By drawing parallels between the brain’s neural  networks and the circuits of machines, he laid the foundation for modern fields like artificial  intelligence, computer science, and automation. Wiener acknowledged his father’s  influence on his career, stating: “I have chosen for the work of my later years  the study of communication and communication apparatus.

This is a subject with  linguistic and philological sides which I have learned from my father. ” The man who caused Norbert the greatest pain was also the one who laid the  foundation for his greatest success. Norbert never believed that  his father truly saw him as an average mind whom he molded into a genius.

Instead, he saw Leo’s statements  as a way to keep his ego in check, “to curb my self-conceit and  cut me down to family size. ” Norbert rejected the idea that  genius could be created from nothing: “So you can make your child a genius, can  you? Yes, as you can make a blank canvas into a painting by Leonardo or a ream of  clean paper into a play by Shakespeare.

My father could give me only what my father had:  his sincerity, his brilliance, his learning, and his passion. These qualities are not  to be picked up on every street corner. ” Leo projected his own desire  for recognition onto his son.

Despite being a respected  linguist and philologist, Leo felt that his colleagues never  saw his work as truly revolutionary. Norbert recognized this struggle: “I  could perceive at the same time the agony of my father and his need for approval. ” Norbert raised his two daughters differently, refusing to bring them up in the same, strict way.

Despite the struggles of his early years, Norbert seemed to have made peace with his past, viewing  his later accomplishments as far more significant: “The question of the success or failure  of my adolescence and postadolescence has become unimportant to me  as to everybody else through the larger issues developed during  my career as a working scholar. ” If Norbert Wiener’s discoveries  have inspired you to deepen your understanding of math or explore  related fields like computer science, data science, or AI, Brilliant  is the perfect place to start. Instead of passively watching lessons, Brilliant  makes learning interactive—you’ll actively solve problems, helping you truly grasp concepts like  algebra, calculus, and vectors in a hands-on way.

You can also learn to program by diving  into Python, where you can start building programs from day one using their  built-in drag-and-drop editor. One of my favorite courses are Brilliant’s  AI offerings, including How Large Language Models Work, which breaks down how AI chatbots  like Grok, ChatGPT, and DeepSeek actually work. No matter what you choose, Brilliant  helps you think critically and improve your problem-solving skills with every lesson.

Whether you're just starting out or looking  to improve on what you already know, there’s something to meet you at your level. And the best part? You can try Brilliant for  FREE for 30 days by signing up using my link: brilliant.

org/newsthink or by  scanning the QR code on your screen. That’s brilliant. org/newsthink—for a FREE 30-day trial, plus get 20% off an  annual Premium subscription.

Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom.