I probably count as some kind of example. -- I was born in 1960. -- I got my first algebra book when I was 4, and aced the subject immediately. -- I had one

I probably count as some kind of example. -- I was born in 1960. -- I got my first algebra book when I was 4, and aced the subject immediately. -- I had one IQ test score higher than the one that got Marilyn vos Savant into the Guinness Book of World Records. -- The National Merit folks thought that I was the youngest winner of their scholarships until that day. -- I got a math PhD from Harvard when I was 19. -- At least up to a point, I check a lot of the usual boxes, like music and chess. That said, I was not some kind of math genius. Ofer Gabber and Ran Donagi were at Harvard when I was, having started in grad school at 16 and 17 respectively (I started at 16), and both were clearly better at math than I was, even adjusted for age. More particularly: -- When I was young, I was really, really good at keeping a problem in my mind and worrying at it until I made progress. I could fall asleep doing that and keep going when I woke up. I understand that's quite unusual, and as I aged I lost the ability myself. -- I'm not particularly good at spatial reasoning. I can power my way through some of it by raw inferencing, at which I am indeed very good, but that's about it. -- I can learn a bit about any subject and appreciate key issues in it very, very quickly. That's reflected in my actual career, and also in the large number of subjects I dabbled in in school. -- I probably COULD have been world-class somewhere in the vicinity of economics/public policy (as academic areas). But I was burned out on academia at age 21, after 9 years at universities, left for the business world, and never went back. -- I don't know how good I'd have been as a computer scientist. I never tried.