In the most extensive study of prodigies to date, the psychologist Joanne Ruthsatz and her colleagues administered a standardized test of intelligence to 18 prodigies-five in art, eight in music, and five in math. However, recent research indicates that basic cognitive abilities known to be influenced by genetic factors also play a role in prodigious achievement. When Venus and Serena Williams were children, they moved with their family from California to Florida so they could train at an elite tennis academy.

More recently, Tiger Woods’ father introduced him to golf at age 2. Mozart’s father, Leopold, was a highly sought after music teacher, and gave up his own promising career as a musician to mange his son’s career. As the late psychologist Michael Howe argued, 'With sufficient energy and dedication on the parents' part, it is possible that it may not be all that difficult to produce a child prodigy.' Extraordinary opportunity is indeed a theme that runs through the biographies of many prodigies. According to one account, it is possible that most anyone could be a prodigy, with the right environment. What explains prodigies? How can a person accomplish so much so fast? Psychologists have long debated this question. Thus did Mozart accomplish more by the age that someone today would enter high school than one of his contemporaries would hope to accomplish in a long composing career. At age 7, he toured Germany and played for Louis XV at a dinner party in Paris, and by age 14, he had composed an opera. The following year, he played for the Holy Roman Empress of the Habsburg Dynasty and her musically inclined daughter, Marie Antoinette.

As the historian Paul Johnson recounts in Mozart: A Life, Mozart began playing the clavier at age 4 and was composing at 5. But through a dozen or so major biographies and the 1984 movie Amadeus, what has most captivated the popular imagination are Mozart's childhood accomplishments. He was said to be composing on his deathbed. Before his untimely death, at age 35, Mozart composed 61 symphonies, 49 concertos, 23 operas, 17 masses, and scores of other works. This January, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, classical music’s original wunderkind, turns 260.

How to become a prodigy member