Science: Terman's Kids

For decades the problems of human personality have puckered the benign and seamy face of Lewis Madison Terman. Dr. Terman, professor of psychology at Stanford University, has spent much time studying the personality factors that make for happy or unhappy marriages (TIME, June 24, 1935; Oct. 17, 1938). Another of his great interests is child prodigies. In Science last week Dr. Terman reported what happens to child prodigies when they grow up, get jobs, get married.

Before 1850, a gifted child was regarded with "a mixture of admiration, awe and hopeful expectation." But in the latter 19th Century the idea spread that...