Getty Images / Emmanuel Dunand As a student at Harvard in the 1970s, Bill Gates impressed more than one faculty member with his mathematical brilliance.
The anecdote resurfaced in a recent answer on the Quora thread, "How intelligent is Bill Gates?".
The story serves as a reminder that the wealthiest and most successful people among us may have been exceptional from the start.
When I was an assistant professor at Harvard, Bill was a junior.
My girlfriend back then said that I had told her: "There's this undergrad at school who is the smartest person I've ever met.".
He had moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to run a small company writing code for microprocessors, of all things.
The idea that intelligence might play more than a minimal role in individual success is an uncomfortable one to consider. »