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Just after the First World War, Lewis Terman, a young professor of psychology at Stanford University,
第一次世界大战结束不久，年轻的斯坦福大学心理学教授刘易斯.特曼（Lewis Terman)
met a remarkable boy named Henry Cowell.
遇到了一个名叫亨利.考埃尔的非同寻常的男孩。
Cowell was raised in poverty in chaos.
考埃尔在混杂的贫民区长大，
Because he did not get along with other children, he had been unschooled since the age of seven.
由于和同年龄的孩子相处经常弄出亊端，所以他7岁之后一直没有接受正规的学校教育。
He worked as a janitor at a one-room school house not far from the Stanford campus,
他长期在斯坦福学校附近的一所单课室学校当看门人。
and throughout the day, Cowell would sneak away from his work, and played the school piano.
但是，在这段日子里，考埃尔常常离开工作岗位，偷偷地在学校钢琴上演奏，
And the music he made was beautiful.
他演奏得非常棒。
Terman's specialty was intelligence testing;
而测试智商是特曼的专长：
the Standards IQ tests that million of people around the world would take over the following fifty years, the Standford Binet, was his creation.
50年后，世界上有数白万人进行的标准IQ测试——斯坦福比奈测试——就是他发明的，
So he decided to test Cowell's IQ. The boy must be intelligent, he reasoned, and sure enough, he was.
因此，特曼决定测试一下考埃尔的智商。特曼有充分的理由相信，这个孩子肯定是聪明的。
He had an IQ of above 140, which is a genius level.
结果证明考埃尔不仅聪明，还可以说是天才：他的IQ达到了140,这是接近天才的水准。
Terman was fascinated. How many other diamonds in the rough were there? he wondered.
特曼被自己的发现弄得神魂颠倒。他想，世界上还有多少这样的“真金白银”没被发现呢？
He began to look for others.
他开始搜寻其他天才。
He found a girl who knew the alphabet at nineteen month, and another who was reading Dickens and Shakespear by the time she was four.
他发现了一个才17个月大就认识字母表的女孩子，和另一个4岁就开始读狄更斯和莎士比亚作品的女孩。
He found a young man who had been kicked out of law school
他还发现了一个被法学院扫地出门的年轻人，
because his professions did not believe that it was possible for human being to precisely reproduce long passages of legal opinions from memory.
因为法学院的教授认为，无论如何，一个人是不可能凭借记忆脱口说出法律意见书上冗长的条文的，除非是弄虚作假。
In 1921, Terman decided to make the study of the gifted his life work.
从1921年开始，特曼把研究天才作为自己的终身职业。
Armed with a large grand from the Commonwealth Foundation,
在联邦基金会的大力支持下，
he put together a team of fieldworkers and sent them out into California's elementary schools.
特曼组织了—个团队到加利福尼亚的小学进行研究。
Teachers were asked to nominate the brightest students in their class.
学校的老师首先从班级挑选出最聪明的一些学生，
Those students were given an intelligence test.
然后对这些学生进行智力测试，
The students who scored in the top 10 percent were then given a second IQ test.
测试成绩排在前面10%的学生进入第二轮的智力测试，
And those who scored above 130 on that test were given a third IQ test.
这一轮测试成绩达到130以上的学生接着进行第三轮测试。
And from that set of results, Terman selected the best and the brightest.
最后，特曼根据婊终测试的结果挑选出最聪明最厉害的学生。
