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F was born in upper New York State, November 14, 1914. The period of gestation was of normal length; at birth he weighed according to the father 9 pounds, according to the mother 11.5 pounds. No records of early infancy were kept, so that many such details are given from memory, either by the father or by the mother. The child was the mother's first-born. She reports that much of the infant's weight at birth was due to his enormous head, which necessitated instrument birth. Birth was difficult, the mother was severely injured, and the child's head "was so distorted from the instruments that it was weeks before it could be molded into normal shape."

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As already recorded, F was transferred in 1924, at the age of 10 years, to the Special Opportunity Class in P.S. 165, Manhattan, then being organized for experimental purposes connected with the education of children of rare intelligence. He graduated from this class into senior high school. He and another boy (Child C, Chapter 6) led this highly selected group of children in achievement tests. As he was at this time, Leta S. Hollingworth wrote of him:

I have never met with a more interesting child than he was, and the same creativeness and inexorable logic which characterized him then have always continued.

He entered, after a brief experience in a progressive private school, a public high school in New York City, in 1925. His high school career was a checkered one, typical in some respects of his later educational history. For one thing, he was a constant truant, and he refused to do the required work in physical education. He had always been averse to physical activity and loathed manual work to the end of his career. He said that the gymnasium work always left him feeling "worse," gave him colds, and was of no use to him. Perhaps his subsequent medical history throws some light on the reasons for these observations.

His truant hours were spent partly in the public library, where he read continuously in technical volumes in a great variety of fields and accumulated an amazing fund of general information and esoteric lore. Law, theology, history, science, and literature were some of his favorite fields.

When not in the library, he would usually be at a chess club to which he had been granted access and where he had learned the game. He rapidly developed into an expert chess and bridge player, and in Eastern chess tournaments is said to have achieved the ranking of seventh in the national list. He always managed to appear at high school to take the necessary examinations, and passed all his subjects with good standing and even with phenomenal records. But his inexplicable truancy and his refusal to do the required work in physical education baffled the educational authorities. They finally refused to graduate him with his class— although his record was among the best—until he had redeemed himself by doing the gymnasium work in a fifth year. In 1930 he did this, and also carried some additional courses and thus was allowed to finish high school, requiring longer than the conventional period for this because of his refusal to accommodate his own interests and ideas to the regular routine.

In September, 1934, F was again persuaded, through financial assistance practically forced upon him, and after much urging and long discussion, to try college. He enrolled in Columbia College, once more a freshman. He carried a heavy program, tried to do certain outside jobs as assistant provided for him, and probably overworked. He had declined one patron's offer to give him a stipulated sum of money for the year if he would abstain from chess for that period. In fact, only vigorous prodding led him to go to college at all at this time, even with the way opened for him.

The outcome appeared to be another fiasco. In January, as the examination period drew near, he became ill, developed pneumonia, and for the second time withdrew from college before completing a term of work. In this instance his illness appeared to justify the act.

In the autumn of 1935, having been nursed back to reasonable health through patrons interested in his case, he was urged by them to make a fresh start and to try the University of Chicago plan, under which students could progress as rapidly as they were able to satisfy the requirements through comprehensive examinations. He entered the University of Chicago that fall, for the third time a college freshman, agreeing to do this without any great enthusiasm of his own but as part of what was called an "educational experiment."

Of his record on entrance the following comment was made by the chief examiner:

The examiners have called my attention to a freak case in our records for the incoming students. . . . His performance seems almost unbelievable. On the freshman classification tests his performance was as follows: first in the vocabulary test; first in the reading test; second in the Intelligence Test of the American Council; third in the English placement test; third in the physical science placement test . . . in the freshman class of about 750 students.

In addition, he also took four Comprehensives with the following grades: Biological Science, A; Humanities, B; Social Sciences, A; Physical Sciences, D.

The year at Chicago was not without episode. F was held up by two gunmen, engineered the capture of one of these, and was advised to disappear for a time during the excitement. Impetuously, and without resources except the provisions made by his sponsor for his own subsistence, he married a young Jewish girl. But the "Chicago Plan" kept its word, and by the end of the year F had passed all the Comprehensives required to give him his B.A. degree. In doing this he acquired a good deal of newspaper and popular magazine notoriety, and his photograph, and that of his young wife, were often reproduced in the public prints.

Although he fancied he would like to be a lawyer, F finally decided to go in for graduate work. Some uncertainties prevailed in connection with his acceptance by some of the graduate schools because, although he had been three times a college freshman (a point never brought out in the newspaper accounts of his educational progress), he had completed but one year of college residence.

Eventually he was awarded a graduate fellowship in Teachers College, Columbia University, for study toward the Ph.D. degree in education, and he completed a year of work there, accomplishing, in addition to the class work, a minor experimental study, a report of which was subsequently published. For the following year he was appointed Assistant in Psychology at Barnard College. At the last moment, just before the beginning of the new term, he decided to shift to law, which was one of his boyish ambitions. He was enabled to return to Chicago for this purpose.