Our episode today begins in the 1960s with Laszlo Polgar and his hot and saucy epistolary courtship with a foreign language teacher named Klara.

Correction here. Laszlo's letters were less hot and saucy and more….precise and instrumental. There was no time for detailing THE karma sutra. László was on a mission. He wanted to raise child geniuses. So, in his letters to Klara, he outlines the pedagogical experiment he intends to carry out with his future progeny.

Laszlo clearly knows how to woo a lady.

The guiding theory behind this experiment was that Laszlo believed that any healthy child had the innate capacity to become a genius if their education starts by the time they are three, and specialises by the time they are six.

All he needed was a wife to jump onboard, so to speak.

Klara was clearly intellectually aroused by his letters and, in rough translation from Hungarian she said to László “Mate, I am bloody in”.

And so the great experiment began.

After what was probably some very methodical, precise and well-thought-out intercourse, they had three children. Susan (1970), Sophia (1974) and Judit (1976).

Now that they had their subjects, it was time to start phase two - education. László believed public education only produced mediocre minds - but homeschooling was illegal in Hungary at the time. After a battle with an armed policeman, he won on the homeschooling front.

Now that they could successfully and legally educate their children at home, the next hurdle was to find the specialisation that would allow the genius to blossom.

Their eldest daughter Susan sorted that quandary when, aged four, she found a chess board in a closet. Was she obsessed from that very first sighting? Probably not. To be fair, she was just trying to find something that resembled a toy to play with. The household wasn’t big on barbies or monster trucks.

Now that Susan had inadvertently picked a speciality, it was decided - all three girls would become chess masters (it’s not an experiment without replication).

The next hurdle to overcome was infiltrating the boys club that was chess at the time.

Back in the 1970s, less than 1% of top chess players were female. So, Laszlo's mission turned him into a women’s rights activist as a nice little side effect.

Did Laszlo and Klara succeed in their genius-raising experiment? How do they feel about the outcome? And where are Susan, Sophia and Judit now?

 

Tune in to find out.

 

Previous episodes mentioned:

The Actual Genius of Paul Erdős

Dozenalism!

 

References:

• herway - Epistolary Relationship: 6 Reasons To Bring Back Old-School Romance
• Wikipedia - László Polgár
• Psychology Today - The Grandmaster Experiment
• The Conversation - What’s behind the gender imbalance in top-level chess? 
• Independent - A man with a talent for creating genius: William Hartston meets Laszlo Polgar, the father of three world-class chess players
• The Guardian - Judit Polgar: 'Everything was about chess'
• Chicago Tribune - Trained to be a genius, girl, 16, wallops chess champ spassky for $110,000

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