The Childhood Pattern of Genius’ 
By Harotp G. McCurpy 
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina 
Genius by any definition is rare. If, following Galton, we make 
lasting fame one of the requirements, it is very rare indeed, and we 
are reduced to studying it at a distance through biography. Now, 
biographies have their limitations; as Havelock Ellis noted, one may 
search through them in vain for the most ordinary vital statistics. 
Above all, they cannot be expected to yield information on those 
details of early life, such as nursing and weaning and toilet training, 
to which psychoanalysis has attached so much importance. When, 
therefore, one proposes as I do here to explore the question whether 
there is some pattern of environmental influences operating on chil- 
dren of genius which might help to account for their later achieve- 
ment, it should be self-evident that the question is necessarily ad- 
justed to something less than microscopic precision. Not only so, but, 
because the factor of heredity cannot be controlled, any answer what- 
soever must be regarded as partial and tentative and ambiguous. 
Nevertheless, there may be some profit in asking the question, and 
insofar as it is directed simply toward the discovery of uniformity 
of environmental pattern there is no inherent reason why it should 
not be answerable, provided we do not insist on minute detail. 
Table 1 presents the 20 geniuses into whose childhood this paper 
will inquire. The selection was partly deliberate, on theoretical 
grounds, and partly random, as will be explained. In Cox’s monu- 
mental study of great geniuses [7] * the main sample consists of 282 
men drawn from the list of 1,000 which was compiled by J. McKeen 
Cattell on the principle that the amount of space allotted to them 
in biographical dictionaries could be taken as an objective measure of 
their true eminence. Though one may certainly quarrel with some of 
Cattell’s results, the sifting process applied by Cox was admirable. 
1Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, 
vol. 73, No. 2, November 1957 
2 Numbers in brackets indicate references at the end of the text. 
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