During my career in mathematics and physics, I have met a lot of highly intelligent people. Their personalities seem to run the same gamut as the personalities in most intellectual categories. There are some who are socially pleasant and use their gifts to help others, while others display open hostility and use their intellectual gifts to denigrate those around them.
During his undergraduate years, Ravi Vakil placed among the top 5 competitors in the prestigious William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, earning him the top award of “Putnam Fellow” in each year. Since its inception in 1938, only 8 competitors have been able to achieve this amazing feat. His stellar performance prompted the San Francisco Chronicle to describe him as “a legend in the world of math competitions.” Today, he is a full Professor of Mathematics at Stanford, has an impressive publishing record and is President of the American Mathematical Society. Throughout his career he has dedicated himself to helping others succeed in Olympiads, research or in furthering their careers. Those who know him observe that, in spite of his intellectual gifts, he is approachable, highly sociable, and committed to helping others achieve their goals.
On the other hand, there are people like Steve Jobs, the brilliant visionary and co-founder of Apple Inc., who many people reported to have a personality that might be described as “toxic.” His biographer, Walter Isaacson reported:(Isaacson, Walter. 2011. Steve Jobs, New York: Simon & Schuster p. 223)
What particularly struck [Joe] Nocera [writer for Esquire Magazine] was Jobs’s almost willful lack of tact. “It was more than just an inability to hide his opinions when others said something he thought dumb; it was a conscious readiness, even a perverse eagerness, to put people down, humiliate them, show he was smarter.”
We can only speculate on why Steve Jobs had this kind of latent hostility. His father abandoned him and his mother put him up for adoption. Although is adopting parents were very loving and supportive, and Steve later stated that he had a wonderful childhood, he never lost his resentment for his father. This may have affected his mistrust of people and his need to vent his anger.
His partner, Steve Wozniak, who helped him build Apple Inc., was, in remarkable contrast, a self-effacing and kind person who was the brains behind the engineering component of Apple Inc.. A delightful and illuminating insight into Steve Wozniak’s personality can be viewed at: The early days | Steve Wozniak | TEDxBerkeley
This brings us to the question: Why are highly intelligent people so dramatically different in personality? Our personalities are partly determined by our genetics and partly by our home environment. Our experiences during our formative years are vital in shaping who we are and how we relate to others. Kind and loving parents stack the odds in our favor, but they provide no guarantee. Sibling relationships also shape who we become, as do our early social relationships at school. Extremely bright children are seen as different, and following the pattern of the “Ugly Duckling” syndrome, are often isolated, ridiculed or bullied. How they deal with this is often a determinant in how they feel and behave toward others. When you contrast Jobs and Wozniak, you see two brilliant people who emerged with remarkably different attitudes and behaviors toward people.
