Booksbook newsself taught geniusslidepollajax

Steve Jobs And 6 Other Self-Educated Geniuses

Steve Jobs And 6 Other Self-Educated Geniuses
Bookish

By Luke Dempsey for Bookish:

Out in the woods, iron in hand and an impossible shot to make: It was the second play-off hole of the 2012 Masters and for most players, the position would have been hopeless—but not every golfer’s like Bubba Watson. With one swing of his 52-degree gap wedge, he created a banana-shaped miracle out of the mess he was in and dropped his golf ball onto Augusta National’s 10th green, a few feet from the hole. A man who has never taken a lesson in his life, nor pursued any “standard golf education,” had just won the most storied tournament of all.

Bubba Watson’s triumph was a victory for savants everywhere. To celebrate his achievement, here are seven other self-schooled geniuses to prove that even if you lack formal training, you can still rise to the top of your chosen game.

Gallery
Mozart(01 of07)
Open Image Modal
Though his father was a classical musician and composer, by the time Mozart junior started to show promise (erm, that would be when he began to compose at age 5), Pops knew enough to leave the music trade to his gifted son. Peter Gay's pleasingly concise life of Mozart takes us into the world of the great boy and man, revealing how genius arrived early in the Mozart household.
Steve Jobs(02 of07)
Open Image Modal
Jobs, unlike Mark Zuckerberg, wasn't a graduate of a big-time university--he was a garage tinkerer who just happened to invent a new operating system, and then a barrage of products people now line up around the block to buy. Walter Isaacson's epochal biography brings Jobs' early years of experimentation to life as no other, not least of all because he got Jobs to sit for more than 40 extremely revealing interviews.
Coco Chanel(03 of07)
Open Image Modal
Self-taught seamstress though she was, the great French fashion designer had no formal education in the design business, and though her namesake items retail in the thousands of dollars, Chanel grew up poorer than poor. Lisa Chaney manages to unhook all the stitches Chanel made for the life story she habitually told--deriving the nickname "Coco" from first name "Gabrielle" was the least of her fabrications--in her masterly and highly controversial new biography, "Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life."
Jimi Hendrix(04 of07)
Open Image Modal
Many great pop musicians are self-taught--in fact, the words 'rock' and 'school' in the same sentence send shivers up aficionados' spines. But even as an autodidact, Hendrix stood out. You can't teach the primal scream of his licks, nor his innovative use of feedback--he was so self-taught that he played the guitar "upside down" (he was naturally left-handed and used a right-handed axe flipped over). Charles Cross profiles the Seattle native in his groundbreaking biography "Room Full of Mirrors."
Albert Einstein(05 of07)
Open Image Modal
Decca Records turned down the Beatles, and a teacher of Albert Einstein reportedly said, "You'll never amount to anything." Oops. One of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known was a notoriously poor student, even though he'd been told he'd go nowhere, proving true Paul Simon's line that "when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school / it's a wonder I can think at all." Einstein could think for sure, as Abraham Pais shows with his classic biography "Subtle is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein."
Abraham Lincoln(06 of07)
Open Image Modal
Though this great president had some schooling, it was only for about a year and the teachers were itinerant and hardly experts in pedagogy. Fortunately for the Union, Lincoln was a reader, and what he learned through his love of books came to fruition in a political career unlike any other in the history of the United States. Part of that legacy--now, seemingly lost in the confrontational politics of the 21st century--was an ability to create consensus in a fractured country, as Doris Kearns Goodwin shows in "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."
Daniel Tammet(07 of07)
Open Image Modal
Few writers have had to overcome the obstacles faced by British writer Daniel Tammet. Severely Aspergian, Tammet is rare in that he's able to communicate clearly and evocatively the life of his synesthetic min. His two books -- the New York Times bestseller "Born on a Blue Day," and "Embracing the Wide Sky"--vividly take readers inside an intelligence that once calculated pi to 22,514 places, and which enables him to learn a new language in about a week.

Read more at Bookish

Our 2024 Coverage Needs You

As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.

Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.

to keep our news free for all.

Support HuffPost
Suggest a correction
|
Submit a tip