It’s super rare to be intellectually gifted and a world-class athlete. There was an NFL offensive lineman with a published mathematical paper as well, but I didn’t know about Turing’s physical talents until now.

I don’t know of any other instances of brilliant people being paid or awarded medals for their physical abilities, so I personally found it interesting.

I guess the parent comment was for those of us that were intrigued by the intersection of top-tier physical and mental abilities.

It’s also a healthy correction for the nerds-versus-jocks dichotomy which was so common for years. There are a non-trivial number of people who actively questioned someone’s technical competency if they were athletic or assumed that the only way to be a successful academic was to grind everything else out of their life.

My experience is that high-achievers in one area are often high-achievers in other areas as well. For academics as well as athletics, individual ability matters, but the discipline and work-ethic that most high-achievers have translates across fields.

Yes - also simply the circumstances: if you’re in a position to do either well, you probably don’t have serious chronic health problems, family demands, poverty, etc. That doesn’t make it easy but it makes it possible to focus on something more than survival, much as how coming from a financially stable family makes it easier for someone to take a gamble on a startup rather than a safer job at a big company.

There's https://news.mit.edu/2019/student-john-urschel-math-football... .

Because he's also a Mathematician in the Olympics, similar to (but not as successful) as Mrs. Kiesenhofer. We like when nerds are not completely 1 dimensional.

Hmm, I've got a friend who won the German championship in their sport (watersport, individual) and went on to get a PhD in math, so maybe that's why the idea of both being a successful sportsman and following an academic career was not exactly foreign to me. Thanks for replying!

Why don't you call her Dr. Kiesenhofer then? Esp. Austrians love their titles.