Childhood and Eminence.

"The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day," wrote John Milton in 1667. Our research on childhood traits of highly eminent people confirms the poet's wisdom. Outstanding traits and conditions of childhood can be identified that foreshadow the degree and the kind of eminence that history records. But, as rainy afternoons sometime follow sunny mornings contrary to expectations, the childhood traits and conditions are possible clues or indications of adult eminence rather than certain predictors. Systematic research on the highly eminent originated in Francis Galton's analysis of outstanding English families. In Hereditary Genius, published more than a century ago, Galton argued that heredity largely determines eminence since the families he studied produced several generations of outstanding doctors, scientists, politicians, and other leaders (1869). Subsequently, however, psychologists pointed out that such families may provide more stimulating environments, and that it is far from easy to estimate the separate effects of heredity and environment. Moreover, parents, educators, and psychologists are usually more interested in discovering or enhancing traits that make for outstanding adult performance than finding out whether they are more determined by heredity than environment. The sample of persons for our research traces back to the work ofJames McKean Cattell, founder of the biographical volumes American Men of Science (now called American Men and Women of Science). In 1903, Cattell listed in rank order of imputed eminence the 1,000 most eminent people