What is genius? Why is it so fascinating to us? And what life lessons can we non-geniuses learn from the brilliant individuals who have worn this title? Professor Craig Wright, the creator of Yale University’s popular “Genius Course,” answers these questions through engaging stories about scores of history’s greatest achievers, from Louisa May Alcott to Émile Zola, as he explores the fourteen key traits of genius he has identified.

 

Genius is allegedly all around us today, from Apple’s Genius Bar to the Baby Einstein products that are intended to make our kids smarter.  Monumental figures like Alan Turing, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Hawking, Virginia Woolf, and Steve Jobs are portrayed in contemporary movies and acclaimed as geniuses.  Then there are “geniuses” proclaimed by popular culture in entertainment, music, sports, business, politics, and the arts, from Oprah Winfrey to Kanye West to Daniel Day-Lewis to Michael Phelps to Warren Buffett.

 

As Wright points out, the definition of genius has changed so often over the millennia that it is clearly a concept relative to time and place.  Until recently, the history of genius in the Western world was populated by “great men” (meaning white men), with women, people of color, and people from non-European cultures almost entirely excluded.  But that is changing, and it is up to each of us to decide what constitutes exceptional human achievement.

 

Drawing on Wright’s decades of study of genius, here is his definition for today: A genius is a person of extraordinary mental powers whose original works or insights change society in some significant way for good or ill across cultures and time.  In brief, the greatest genius produces the greatest impact on the greatest number of people over the longest period of time.

 

Creativity and creation are essential in Wright’s framework, which is why giants of past centuries such as Einstein, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, da Vinci, van Gogh, Darwin, Marie Curie, Picasso, and Queen Elizabeth I are undoubtedly geniuses by his definition.  Yet he also includes more contemporary geniuses  from a wide variety of fields, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Lady Gaga, Jeff Bezos, Toni Morrison, Andy Warhol, and Elon Musk.

Craig Wright PhD '72 is the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale University, where he teaches the popular undergraduate course, “Exploring the Nature of Genius.” A Guggenheim Fellow, Wright has received an honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from the University of Chicago, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the Sewall Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Yale (2016) as well as the DeVane Medal for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship (2018).  He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and a Ph.D. from Harvard.