Yet there is nothing pre-determined about it. Mathematical genius resides within every one of us. Most people just don’t know it yet. That’s because genius is fragile. If you don’t embrace genius and tend to it with care, it will slip away, leaving behind just a subdued vision of the mathematicians we could have become.
If you take even a cursory look through the annals of mathematics, you’ll see the fragile and often fickle nature of genius. Many of the legends of the field — whose talents and achievements are beyond dispute — could so easily have been forgotten by history. Their stories should act as a warning sign to educators today.