Struck by the Power of the Word

"Arthur Gibson, philosopher who rose from poverty to become the cleverest man in Britain," The Telegraph (18 Sept. 2026): Professor Arthur Gibson, who has died aged 83, was a polymath widely recognised as one of the last century’s greatest minds and, measured by IQ, the cleverest man in Britain, despite growing up in poverty in Bradford and dropping out of school aged 14. .... It was in this climate that Gibson stubbornly developed intellectual passions: for maths — despite his father stubbing out cigarettes on his hand when he got answers wrong — and for books, although he once received a Bible to the head after being caught reading it by his anti-literate father. The dyslexic Gibson read everything he could — Bradford Library became a refuge — but he could not translate his instinctive passions into formal academic success. He left school at 14, with no O-levels and unable to recite the alphabet beyond the letter L. .... His friend and fellow Cambridge mathematician Imre Leader…