This man:

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/PictDisplay/Savage.html

mentioned in my reply to Poe, on Bayesian filter, prompted this
OT post, of the Smartest and most unforgetable person I had ever
known, in person or through reading (that included such notables
as Einstein, who was not even as smart as his wife from whom
he took credit for his theory of relativeity.  :-)

Below is an excerpt from something I posted in rec.scuba in March:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8fb7380b.0303251042.44461eef%
40posting.google.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

================================================================
The best and most creative folks are often dropouts.  The Apple
Guy Woz wus a dropout.  The Microshaft Guy Gates wuz a dropout
from Harvard.  I think it would be an interesting thing to see
the list of 'intellectuals' who are dropouts, or diagnosed to be
unfit for college.  Einstein was one.  My mentor at Yale, L.J.
Savage was another.

On the occasion of accepting his Honorary Doctor of Science at
the University of Rochester, Savage said of himself,

"On graguation from high school, most of the teachers and some
other experts who had measured my I.Q., and found it substantially
below normal, were agreed that I was not college material. ..."

Savage was legally blind, from birth, but he read and published
in English, French, German, and Italian.

In college, he became a Chemistry major, and because of his poor
eyesight, blew up the chemistry lab and was prompty discharged
from the department.

"Thus, in my junior year, I found myself systematically canvasing
the university for a new major.  ...   Finally, I got go physics,
which I didn't know anything about.  The chairman of physics, who
was as hard of hearing as I was of seeing, welcomed me warmly and
told me to borrow data from other students ..."


The subject of the thread is, "Who's Smarter?"

IMNSHO, L.J. (Leonard Jimmie) Savage is by FAR the Smartest of them
all, smarter than any 10 of them put together.

> PEACE through STRENGTH.

It takes tremendous STRENGTH to excercise NON-VIOLENCE when the
latter is called for.  Anybody can drop bombs and kill with guns.
Not everyone can be a M.K. Ghandi (or MLK Jr., for that matter).

================================================================

A man legally blind from birth, who not only could speak fluently
in English, German, French, and Italian, but could write seientific
articles and published them in those languages was just the tip
of the iceberg of Jimmie's "smart" and brilliance.

With this note of fond memory and of his book "how to gamble if
you must" which fooled many gamblers in thinking they could
understand it.  It had a subtitle "inequalities in submartigale"
which is about as difficult and mathematical as any book can
be written, to prove just ONE FACT -- that there is no SYSTEM
in gambling that can beat the House in a game that favors
the House, in the long run -- that included ALL gambling games
in all casinos, with the exception of perfect play with memory
of cards in Blackjack.  :-)

With that note, I shall head for another few days in Last
Wages with the mathematical "expectation" of winning enough
in a couple of hours of play to buy enough feeesh food
for my aquarium for a few days.  :-))

ElPezNeuvo.