My best friend, Michael, as a 15 year-old, enrolled at Princeton Univ.
was directed to the Math Department to have someone to converse with.

He immediately became the youngest person to ever head an Ivy League Debating Team.

He was ready for College as a young child, but his family was very protective.

He discovered that many of the Mathematics Professors and Grad' students
were quite active in the Chess Club. There were Masters, Grandmasters, etc.

Michael had never played chess. He asked for the rules. He asked to borrow a set.
It was Friday. On Monday he returned with a heavy thick black blindfold in tow.

He challenged everyone to play him simultaneously. When the laughter
ended, they set up a lot of chess boards. I cannot recall exactly how many.
The result I also cannot recall with precision. However, "when the smoke
cleared" it was something like 14 wins, 1 loss, 3 draws.

No savant chess player, including Kasparov, Fisher, etc.
has ever performed nearly as well without years of study.

I taught him to play backgammon, the most complex game of all,
and he immediately rose to the #1 spot out of approx. 5,500 online
players who often accused him of being a computer because nobody
had ever risen to world class status in a matter of a month or two.

I should mention - Michael is the world's youngest ever Professional
Bridge Player, touring Europe at the age of 15, and then representing
the USA in International Bridge Competition the same year.

The biggest multi-billion dollar lawsuit in history (at the time) was
The State of New York vs. General Electric. The Attorney General
sought the brightest mathematical super-star alive to serve as a
consultant and present to the court an Environmental and Economic
Impact Statement. There must have been shocked expressions when
the skinny geeky kid addressed the jury. L.O.L.

Blackjack ? Michael has a perfect photographic memory. He won a
lot of money playing DD at High Stakes. $1,000 "off the top" up to
$2000 and down to $500. Of course he is universally unwelcome.

His computer models for stock market trading made him wealthy.

His goal was to win TWO Nobel Prizes in two completely diverse fields.

However, his goal requires him to refuse ALL funding from Universities,
Governments or Corporations. In recent years thee economic downturns
have shrunk his assets to under $2,000,000 so he still works as an
independent computer consultant, billing at obscene hourly charges.

I could go on for the next hour or so, but who really cares about this ?

Once upon a time Microsoft added dictation to "Word". My girlfriend said
"Look at this Michael ... Go on. Say something" Michael responded by
reciting fromm memory Julius Caesar's final address to his troops as they
were about to cross the (fateful) Rubicon River -- in the original Greek.
Caesar was bi-lingual preferring Greek over Latin.

I oncementioned (decades ago) something that was in the news re: an upcoming supreme court
decision re: education. Without his keyboarding even slowing, he regaled me with the entire
history of the Supreme Court decisions on education, commencing with the Dred Scot Decision
of 1875 through that day; complete with the deciding margin,who wrote both the majority and
minority opinions and a synopsis of the socio-economic and economic ramifications of the decisions.

At Princeton there was no sense in his registering for courses in the accepted fashion. He instead spent a
few years without ever having to really "take a course" because he would follow a procedure that went
something like this ... "Hello Dr. X. I see that you are teaching a graduate course on (cosmology, quantum
mechanics, etc. etc.). I see that when you published your doctoral dissertation at Harvard prior to your accepting
your Nobel Prize in Oslo, you made an error in your ANOVA, etc. etc. He would always be excused from the course.
Michael always knew more than any facultry member knew about the graduate course being taught.
He never took an undegraduate course. He would agree to show up for class on the first and last day of class.
In his entire life he never failed to get an A+ (or a 100%) as a grade. He went to a private Prep School and his
parents would not unleash him upon the world until he was 15. He was very literate (bilingual) at age 2, when
normal children are first able to utter simple sentences.

Michael can do complex algorithms "in his head" almost as fast as the digits can be entered into a calculator.

He had hung out with the late Carl Sagan for awhile. He told me that "Carl was a real smart guy."

So much for understatement.

He hangs out with the top economists at the Washington D.C. "Think Tanks" as he lives nearby.

There are a few things that he has done that are beyond belief, so I will not mention same.

Having him as my closest friend (since 1989) has been a wonderful thing.

As a retired psychologist I was tempted to perform a complete 4 hour Stanford-Binet Intellectual Assessment

I knew that he would be (perhaps) the only person to "Max Out" the exam generating an I.Q. ofd 190.

I have another close friend (since 1992) whose I.Q. I estimate at < 90.

Marshall is a semi-literate hair-dresser who is 84 years old.