Has there ever been someone as equivalently intelligent or accomplished as Jansci?
I'm not being rhetorical, it seems like he might be the single most accomplished man in history and it is genuinely very difficult for me to find an equivalent or better.
Does Veeky Forums have any candidates?
Additionally I have a little known story by Wigner about his incredible abilities by mental calculation. They have been mythologized greatly I suspect by Halmos' publication "The Legend of John Von Neumann" which is as far as I can tell the origin of the legend that he could divide an eight digit number by an eight digit number in his head.
"I have a story against him, if you want to hear it. I once told him that I just read, to my amazement, that somebody could multiply two 5-digit figures in his head. He said, "That's wonderful. I'll try it also. " I gave him two 5-digit figures. He went to the corner, as he always did when he wanted to think hard, looked up, and mumbled. He did that for about five minutes, and then he came back with a product. I said, "Wonderful, congratulations." He said, "Is it correct? " I said, "No, but to get any result is wonderful." It is very difficult, almost impossible, to multiply two 5-digit figures in your head. After all, for what purpose was paper discovered?"
Da Vinci was pretty smart but it's hard to compare people living in completely different eras.
Mason Morales
What about John Forbes Nash Jr?
I know that Jansci basically created the field of Game Theory but whose discoveries were more significant/original?
Zachary Brown
Why did he steal other mathematicians works and claimed he came up with them if he was so smart?
Nathaniel Sanders
If you're going to make a thread like this at least talk about their actual accomplishments and not their ability to do inconsequential number crunching in their head
Yes, it's impressive. No, I can't do it. Yes, back then they didn't have the computing power to do a calculation like that in an efficient timeframe. But that doesn't make it anymore of an argument that they're smart and accomplished than saying (insert random autist here) can do quadruple integrals in their head
Blake Sanders
Part of the point of the thread is me sorting the mythology from the reality.
Perhaps he is much inferior to Euler, Isaac Newton but it appears to me that he is the most accomplished man in history.
I gave an example that at least one of his claimed abilities was real but much exaggerated. Maybe he was not the genius he is often purported to be.
Part of me thinks that Feynman may have been smarter but I'm not sure.
I kind of just wanted to sort myth from reality.
Henry Lopez
I'm trying to figure out how much mythology surrounds this guy.
He has a long list of accomplishments and people make grandiose claims about his abilities but how do both stack up?
I was asking people better aware of his accomplishments than I am to compare and contrast them with other candidates for most accomplished scientist.
Jason White
ah. ok. I wouldn't concern myself with the "mythological" shit surrounding him (like the multiplication example)
Just focus on what you can know about his work - that alone should show you just how fucking brilliant the guy was
Alexander White
>But that doesn't make it anymore of an argument that they're smart [...] It kinda does. I spend a lot of time on the internet and it happens to read about people who had eidetic abilities when they were younger. Sort of like their minds being collimated into razor focus concentration. A state in which retrieval of information and mental calculation are effortless. This is not uncommon among accomplished meditators, with memory being the least impressive feat.
Chase Cooper
Half of the anecdotes about him are probably bullshit, the other half are probably practical jokes.
Like the story about him reciting 20 minutes worth of a tale of two cities even though he only read it once 15 years ago. Or him memorizing telephone books for fun.
