A pretty common trope in modern adolescent storytelling (the X Men is one big example) is the idea of an abrupt leap in evolution based on genetic mutation. Those stories didn’t come out of nowhere; in the early years of the 20th Century, European scientists including Élie Metchnikoff (Nobel-prize-winning immunologist) and Hugo de Vries (botanist) published papers and books suggesting that the “explanation” for how the human species had differentiated from other hominids was just such a mutation.
The scientific papers and books didn’t come out of nowhere; in the final years of the 19th Century some other European scientists including Jean-Martin Charcot (neurologist) and Camille Flammarion (astronomer) had done actual studies of what they thought was evidence of just such an event. The subject of their investigations was Jacques Inaudi, who was born October 13, 1867.
Inaudi was born in Italy in a rural community, and grew up as a shepherd. He was just a normal kid in every way except one: he was a calculating prodigy. The sort of person who can tell you the answer to a math problem nearly instantly, doing all the operations in his head. He was evidently very impressive, because as an adult he gave up being a shepherd (he’d probably finished counting all the sheep, after all) and toured the world as a performer. The audience would call out large numbers and he would immediately respond with their sum, or product, or some other result. Naturally, experts from the local schools and universities were on hand to agree that yes, Inaudi was right again.
Hugo de Vries went so far as to argue that Inaudi’s ability was enough to classify him (and, presumably, his children) as a new species. Alfred Binet, the psychologist who assembled the first IQ test, wrote a book about Inaudi. But after about 1910 or so, the scientists got interested in something else and wandered away. One possible hole in their theories was that Inaudi’s children were just average math students; his ability apparently wasn’t a genetic mutation after all; just something he could do, in the same sense that Mozart could compose music at a very young age.
That wasn’t the last time notable scientists were fascinated by a performer, though. In the 1960s and 70s, the magician Uri Geller convinced some scientists that he could really read minds, bend spoons with his brain, and teleport objects. Andrija Puharich (physician and medical researcher) wrote a book about him. And so it goes.
