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Just after the First World War, Lewis Terman, a young professor of psychology at Stanford University,
第一次世界大戰結束不久，年輕的斯坦福大學心理學教授劉易斯.特曼（Lewis Terman)
met a remarkable boy named Henry Cowell.
遇到了一個名叫亨利.考埃爾的非同尋常的男孩。
Cowell was raised in poverty in chaos.
考埃爾在混雜的貧民區長大，
Because he did not get along with other children, he had been unschooled since the age of seven.
由于和同年齡的孩子相處經常弄出亊端，所以他7歲之后一直沒有接受正規的學校教育。
He worked as a janitor at a one-room school house not far from the Stanford campus,
他長期在斯坦福學校附近的一所單課室學校當看門人。
and throughout the day, Cowell would sneak away from his work, and played the school piano.
但是，在這段日子里，考埃爾常常離開工作崗位，偷偷地在學校鋼琴上演奏，
And the music he made was beautiful.
他演奏得非常棒。
Terman's specialty was intelligence testing;
而測試智商是特曼的專長：
the Standards IQ tests that million of people around the world would take over the following fifty years, the Standford Binet, was his creation.
50年后，世界上有數白萬人進行的標準IQ測試——斯坦福比奈測試——就是他發明的，
So he decided to test Cowell's IQ. The boy must be intelligent, he reasoned, and sure enough, he was.
因此，特曼決定測試一下考埃爾的智商。特曼有充分的理由相信，這個孩子肯定是聰明的。
He had an IQ of above 140, which is a genius level.
結果證明考埃爾不僅聰明，還可以說是天才：他的IQ達到了140,這是接近天才的水準。
Terman was fascinated. How many other diamonds in the rough were there? he wondered.
特曼被自己的發現弄得神魂顛倒。他想，世界上還有多少這樣的“真金白銀”沒被發現呢？
He began to look for others.
他開始搜尋其他天才。
He found a girl who knew the alphabet at nineteen month, and another who was reading Dickens and Shakespear by the time she was four.
他發現了一個才17個月大就認識字母表的女孩子，和另一個4歲就開始讀狄更斯和莎士比亞作品的女孩。
He found a young man who had been kicked out of law school
他還發現了一個被法學院掃地出門的年輕人，
because his professions did not believe that it was possible for human being to precisely reproduce long passages of legal opinions from memory.
因為法學院的教授認為，無論如何，一個人是不可能憑借記憶脫口說出法律意見書上冗長的條文的，除非是弄虛作假。
In 1921, Terman decided to make the study of the gifted his life work.
從1921年開始，特曼把研究天才作為自己的終身職業。
Armed with a large grand from the Commonwealth Foundation,
在聯邦基金會的大力支持下，
he put together a team of fieldworkers and sent them out into California's elementary schools.
特曼組織了—個團隊到加利福尼亞的小學進行研究。
Teachers were asked to nominate the brightest students in their class.
學校的老師首先從班級挑選出最聰明的一些學生，
Those students were given an intelligence test.
然后對這些學生進行智力測試，
The students who scored in the top 10 percent were then given a second IQ test.
測試成績排在前面10%的學生進入第二輪的智力測試，
And those who scored above 130 on that test were given a third IQ test.
這一輪測試成績達到130以上的學生接著進行第三輪測試。
And from that set of results, Terman selected the best and the brightest.
最后，特曼根據婊終測試的結果挑選出最聰明最厲害的學生。
