The Total Package: Christopher Langan
84
The Smartest Man
Christopher Langan was born 1952 in San Francisco, California and spent his early childhood growing up in Montana. At the age of six-months he began speaking and taught himself to read before the age of four.
According to Christopher, his mother experienced a series of relationship misfortunes. "They either had a habit of dieing or disappearing," he said. Before he was born, his biological father died of a heart-attack. The one man that did stick around married his mother—a verbally and physically abusive sociopath.
At the age of twelve, he began lifting weights. At fourteen, Chris was awakened by a punch in the face by his drunken stepfather in the middle of the night. Up until that point he never once talked back. However, this time was different — it was the last straw. Tired of the physical abuse Christopher snapped. He flew across the room and threw him out the front door. After beating him half-to-death in the front yard, Christopher told him that if he ever came back, he'd finish the job.
Finding the entire experience of school annoying, he spent most of his high school years in independent study. During that time-frame he taught himself advanced mathematics, physics, philosophy, Latin and Greek.
After achieving a perfect score on the SAT, he attended Reed College on a scholarship and later Montana State University. He was forced to drop out due to financial difficulties, along with a string of other unfortunate circumstances. Besides, he believes that he could've taught his professors much more than they could've taught him.
Needing a way to support himself, he landed an array of labor-intensive jobs: construction worker, forest service firefighter, farmhand, and for over twenty years, a bouncer on Long Island.
He says he developed a "double-life strategy", on one side a regular
guy, doing his job and exchanging pleasantries, and on the other side
coming home to perform equations in his head, working in isolation on
his Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CMTU), "A Theory of Everything."
|
Outliers: The Story of Success
Price: $10.88
List Price: $27.99 |
|
|
Outliers/ Outliers: The Story of Success (Spanish Edition)
Price: $12.15
List Price: $19.99 |
Relatively unknown to the world until Esquire magazine published a profile of Langan in 1999, along with other members of the high-IQ community, resulting in a whirlwind of media interests.
In 2004, he moved with his wife Gina LoSasso, a clinical neuropsychologist, to northern Missouri, where they own and operate a ranch.
Langan and his wife, Gina, formed a non-profit organization called the "Mega Foundation" designed to create and implement programs that aid in the development of extremely gifted individuals and their ideas.
This is his way of making sure that highly intelligent individuals have resources available to them where his life was once lacking.
The first time I became aware of Christopher was when 20/20 aired a piece on him about 10 years ago— that segment made a lasting impression. Since then, I've followed his work from time-to-time and my interest was once again piqued with a feature of him in Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers."
Christopher has his own book which he's worked on for quite some time entitled "Design for a Universe," a theory that encompasses all other theories—awaiting a publisher.
Chris, if you happen upon this Hub, you can self-publish with little or no investment through CreateSpace, Lulu or BookSurge. Your fans and followers eagerly await.
Do you know how to do something and want to share your knowledge? Sign up for an account at HubPages. Its fun, free and you can earn ongoing royalty on your Hubs.
PrintShare it! — Rate it: up down flag this hub









