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Young Gates certainly had chutzpah. He was writing to a bunch of excited young computer enthusiasts to object to the “theft” of a version of a program that was, to start, based on software created by academic researchers working on a federal grant and was created using “borrowed” time on a universi…

When Fred Terman praised this system for bringing technical skill to big business in a 1956 address to engineers there were clear echoes of Lewis Terman’s ideas about ensuring that the smartest are in charge. “The idealists, the social planners, the do-gooders, the socialists and others of their il…

Beyond the test’s dubious accuracy, there was a flaw in how the study itself was conducted over the years: Terman repeatedly intervened in the lives of his high-IQ subjects, often without their knowledge. He couldn’t help himself. He wrote them recommendations for admission to Stanford, gave small …

Jane Stanford stepped up to keep the school afloat during this period of economic uncertainty, ignoring business managers who recommended that she allow the school to shutter until she could regain her financial footing. 25 Instead, she convinced the judge presiding over the claims against her husb…

For our story, Terman’s role was vital. He laid the groundwork for a new relationship between a university and business, which proved particularly relevant when computer science was later shown to have the potential to extract fortunes from the American economy. Because of Terman’s ideas, improved …