Ruth Feldman's book devotes an entire chapter to Joel Kupperman. Joel didn't begin to walk and talk until he was 18 months old(!) At 4, he could total his mother's grocery bill faster than an adding machine. Interestingly enough, he and his engineer-father had a 15-minute numbers workout before breakfast every morning. The book's author, the former 'Ruthie Duskin', who also had a childhood I. Q. of 200+, writes,
    'His I. Q. was above 200, and his mental development was the highest that ever had been tested in the twenty-five years of child study by the Chicago public schools. By six, he was reading eighth grade history books* and had been skipped into second grade; his parents were loath to push him any faster.'
   And listen to this:
    'Engaging Joel in conversation,' Fred Allen once said, 'is not unlike talking to a vine. Every time you turn around, the vine has grown out of earshot. You say something, and the next thing you know, he has clambered up your vest front and down your spine.' (Joel said he was sorry for Allen because the comedian was "awfully dumb" about numbers. The two kept up a correspondence, and at Allen's request. the boy sent him the next tooth he lost. Allen wrote back that he was keeping it on his desk and leaving, "little bits of candy and meat around in case the tooth gets hungry.')
    Another Kuppermanism -
    "That wath only a thynopthith. My muvver told me I've been talking too much."
    Joel Kupperman became a philosophy professor at the University of Connecticut. He would be 64 by now.