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Benjamin Franklin: Don't worry, John. The history books will clean it up.
John Adams: It doesn't matter. I won't be in the history books anyway, only you. Franklin did this and Franklin did that and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them- Franklin, Washington, and the horse- conducted the entire revolution by themselves!
--- from the musical 1776, adapted from a letter from Adams
How many living people will be remembered 100 years from now? How many living "geniuses" will still be recognized as such by our great grandchildren? Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, the Gosselins, and Megan Fox may dominate the news, but will barely be footnotes in 20 years (if not, I will change species). The genuine legends likely will range from predictable to less obvious.
One reasonable conclusion is that are not too many folks who are overlooked now but will be hailed as brilliant by our descendants. As much as we may want to believe in the idea of neglected geniuses, it is quite rare. Franz Kafka and Emily Dickinson, alas, are not typical stories. Dean Keith Simonton, who wrote Genius 101 (highly recommended!), studied 496 operas and compared how they were initially received versus how often they are performed today. What he found was that, in general, operas that opened to good reviews and solid runs are the operas that are most commonly performed today. In Genius 101, Simonton cites further studies that have examined genius across other domains.
Indeed, if you think of the most popular writers of the 19th century, you come up with writers like Mark Twain and Charles Dickens - who were much more akin to the Jon Stewart and Stephen King of their time. Even more recently, the musicals of Harold Rome were considered the "high brow" theater of the 1950's, while Rodgers and Hammerstein were seen more as populist tripe. Yet can you name a Harold Rome musical today? If you can, I'm impressed (and a little scared). If you can't, think of Pins and Needles, Fanny, and I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which introduced the world to Barbara Streisand.
Simonton discusses three ways that genius can manifest itself: Outstanding creativity, exceptional leadership, and prodigious performance. These categories make sense to me at a gut level; I'm also reminded of Benjamin Franklin's quote: "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing."
So who belongs in the discussion? Given that I am a scientist, I decided to approach this question in the least scientifically-sound way as humanly possible. I posed this question as my Facebook status (feel free to friend me if you are interested in participating in these types of debates), posted on one of my regularly visited websites, introduced it as a discussion point in my critical thinking class, and chatted about it with friends. I got a number of interesting responses by a wide variety of folks (including Broadway actors, bestselling authors, and top psychologists).
The responses were quite varied, of course. One person began to respond by asking who we remember from the year 1909. Just exploring the Nobel Prizes, there is one winner who I imagine several people know (Marconi); the others, I believe, are lost to history. How many of us have cherished the historical novels of Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf? Looking at people who died in 1909, a number of names still are familiar to some, even if their contributions are not on the tips of our tongues. Some of the deceased who live on 100 years later are Geronimo, John Synge, Algernon Swinburne, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Frederic Remington. Going one year further back, we find Frederick Stanley (as in the Stanley Cup), Grover Cleveland, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus), and Butch Cassidy (and the Sundance Kid).
Based on their suggestions and my own gut instinct, I came up with an array of possibilities. Many, many different people were suggested (some, like Britney Spears, hopefully offered in sarcasm). The list is quite ethnocentric; let us assume that there could easily be a number of lists generated by different cultures and countries, each perfectly viable for future audiences. I am going to save my actual list for my next column (I'm still figuring out the final specifics). I will use Simonton's three examples of lasting genius and will divide my list into exceptional leadership, outstanding creativity, and prodigious performance. I will list people by the area I most associate with them.
As I prepare my own list and compilation, please feel free to make suggestions to help me along! I will post my tentative list early next week.
