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The Common Character Trait of Geniuses | James Gleick | Big Think

Big Think | January 26, 2026



What are the common character traits of geniuses?
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OVERVIEW:

James Gleick, who wrote a biography of Isaac Newton, describes the reclusive scientist as “antisocial, unpleasant and bitter.” Newton fought with his friends “as much as with his enemies,” Gleick says. In contrast, Richard Feynman, the subject of another Gleick biography, was “gregarious, funny, a great dancer.” The superficial differences between the men go on and on. “Isaac Newton, I believe, never had sex,” Gleick says. “Richard Feynman, I believe, had plenty.”

So what could these two men possibly have in common? According to Gleick, when it came to making the great discoveries of science, both men were alone in their heads. This also applies to great geniuses like Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and Ada Byron. “They all had the ability to concentrate with a sort of intensity that is hard for mortals like me to grasp,” Gleick says, “a kind of passion for abstraction that doesn’t lend itself to easy communication.”
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JAMES GLEICK:

James Gleick was born in New York City in 1954. He graduated from Harvard College in 1976 and helped found Metropolis, an alternative weekly newspaper in Minneapolis. Then he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter for The New York Times.

His first book, Chaos, was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist and a national bestseller. He collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature’s Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. His next books include the best-selling biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton, both shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Faster and What Just Happened. They have been translated into twenty-five languages.

In 1989-90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. For some years he wrote the Fast Forward column in the New York Times Magazine.

With Uday Ivatury, he founded The Pipeline, a pioneering New York City-based Internet service in 1993, and was its chairman and chief executive officer until 1995. He was the first editor of the Best American Science Writing series. He is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.
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TRANSCRIPT:

James Gleick: I’m tempted to say smart, creative people have no particularly different set of character traits than the rest of us except for being smart and creative, and those being character traits…

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/james-gleick-the-common-character-traits-of-geniuses

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Comments

This post currently has 25 comments.

  3. @MichaelSkinner-e9j

    January 26, 2026 at 3:27 pm

    Smart, creative people, who learned for the love of learning, who love physics and math (especially how it applies to dimensionality) love life, are empathetic to people, I have depth of character that is obvious to see.

    Be choosy. Take your time. Not everybody has the wherewithal to stop and think. Or Understand Love for that matter.

  7. @ex2ra

    January 26, 2026 at 3:27 pm

    Solitude makes you smarter, does it take a genius to understand that when you have to do everything alone and figure out everything by yourself, and your completely uninhibited by other people’s minds and thoughts processes you will become different? Mix this with a unstoppable drive to learn and obsession over one or multiple things you become a genius. I doubt it’s the life most people would enjoy. But hey if I was a genius I wouldn’t mind.

  12. @jordangill2710

    January 26, 2026 at 3:27 pm

    Usually outlier high IQ, high openness to experience, and low agreeableness. That’s usually common traits. Because of extreme intelligence, it’s incredibly hard to get on with other people, because they’re slow and annoying and stupid and arrogant and insensitive.

  14. @stephaniecleveland8264

    January 26, 2026 at 3:27 pm

    Please would you consider clarifying that an introvert is not an “antisocial”? People with ASPD think highly enough of themselves already. Also you have such a nice voice. Would you consider reading the Shema here on YouTube? I can’t find a male recording of it here.

  22. @demr04

    January 26, 2026 at 3:27 pm

    I understand Newton. Imagine inventing calculus… something that 99% of people don't get today… in 1600s. He must felt being sorround by the most retarded people.

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