The world isn’t lacking in smart or talented people; we see them every time we turn on the TV with their dazzling silver-screen smiles and movie star personas. 

Millions of people once shared red-carpet dreams, but few rarely ever get past the dreaming. 

According to estimates, only 0.02 to 0.03 percent of high school basketball players make it into the NBA. This means that out of every thousand basketball players, only two or three make it big.

Many people often attribute their massive success to some brilliant talent given to them at birth or claim that they were born into wealth that put them ahead of the race.

Was their success affected by their rare genetic coding or by somehow winning the family lottery that most of us were never made aware of?

The question of nature versus nurture is a debate about whether an individual’s social standings are affected by their biological influences or their childhoods. 

Biology tries to simplify the millions of outliers into a simple equation that can be referred to in the future. Sociology examines the patterns and similarities between successful people.

It is a popular debate between the two schools of thought and has been around since parents began comparing their offspring to others.

László Polgár, a Hungarian psychologist turned chess teacher, set out to prove that talent is simply an excuse and success was more than just luck.

As a pioneering theorist, Polgár claims that geniuses are made, not born; a theory that faced ridicule from both sides. If geniuses could be made, why wasn’t everyone a genius? 

There has only been a single Einstein and a single Newton throughout history, and they were the ones who shaped the world. 

Polgár tested his theory on his own children, training his daughters in chess from a young age; they would eventually emerge as the greatest female chess players in the history of the game.

His eldest daughter, Susan Polgár became the top-ranked female chess player in the world and would only continue to dominate the game as the first person to ever win the chess triple crown; awarded to players with Blitz, Rapid, and Classical World Championships.

Sophia Polgár’s legendary “Sack of Rome” tournament, her famed chess tournament in Rome, left the world in shock with her winning 8.5 games out of 9 with a performance rating of 2879, one of the strongest performances in chess history.

Arguably the most talented of the Polgár sisters, Judit Polgár took the chess world by storm, winning tournament after tournament against grandmasters. She secured her spot as a grandmaster at the age of fifteen and has kept her crown as the greatest female chess master in history up until her retirement in 2013.

After studying millions of successful people dead or alive such as Socrates and Einstein, Polgár concluded that a common trait they all shared was that they touched on their field of expertise at a young age. 

Polgár was preparing to be a father before he was even married.

To test his hypothesis, Polgár had to find a woman willing to participate in this as well. 

He wrote letter after letter, searching for the perfect wife. The letters were not filled with Shakespearean poems of eternal love, instead revolving around blunt declarations of the tests he intended to perform on his unborn children.

Klara, a Ukrainian language teacher, was impressed by Polgár’s desire to prove the world wrong. She was on board with his plan to groom a genius. 

They got married in the USSR in 1965 and moved to Hungary where Klara got pregnant soon after. Their first daughter, Susan, was born on April 19, 1969. 

She was homeschooled like all of the Polgár sisters and began her training in chess when she was four years old.

Her father could have chosen any field for the sisters, preferably something objective and measurable, but Susan had chosen chess herself.

“Yes he could have put us in any field,” the oldest of the Polgár sisters admitted, “But it was I who chose chess as a four–year–old…I liked the chessmen; they were toys for me.”

The girls were homeschooled by their parents, an unusual choice for people at their time. They were tutored in languages, math, and science. 

Every other moment in their life was dedicated to chess.

In an interview in 2012, Judit told reporters about how she was raised. “In the beginning, it was a game. My father and mother are exceptional pedagogues who can motivate and tell it from all different angles.”

When the girls hit adolescence, their parents hired professional chess masters to teach them, and their mother arranged their international tournaments.

As time went on the sisters began to grow in fame, they also received derogatory remarks. However, it was through these hardships that the sisters grew even closer.

László’s crazy and possibly unethical experiment with his daughters was successful in producing three geniuses. The Polgár sisters lived an extraordinary childhood and would only go on to live an even more extraordinary life.

The Polgárs’ life and legacy will stand as a living testament that nurture may just triumph over nature.