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 |  Posted: 04/13/12 09:48 AM ET  |  Updated: 04/13/12 09:54 AM ET

Steve Jobs And 6 Other Self-Educated Geniuses

By Luke Dempsey for Bookish:

Out in the woods, iron in hand and an impossible shot to make: It was the second play-off hole of the 2012 Masters and for most players, the position would have been hopeless—but not every golfer’s like Bubba Watson. With one swing of his 52-degree gap wedge, he created a banana-shaped miracle out of the mess he was in and dropped his golf ball onto Augusta National’s 10th green, a few feet from the hole. A man who has never taken a lesson in his life, nor pursued any “standard golf education,” had just won the most storied tournament of all.

Bubba Watson’s triumph was a victory for savants everywhere. To celebrate his achievement, here are seven other self-schooled geniuses to prove that even if you lack formal training, you can still rise to the top of your chosen game.

Mozart
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Though his father was a classical musician and composer, by the time Mozart junior started to show promise (erm, that would be when he began to compose at age 5), Pops knew enough to leave the music trade to his gifted son. Peter Gay's pleasingly concise life of Mozart takes us into the world of the great boy and man, revealing how genius arrived early in the Mozart household.
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By Luke Dempsey for Bookish: Out in the woods, iron in hand and an impossible shot to make: It was the second play-off hole of the 2012 Masters and for most players, the position would have been ho...
By Luke Dempsey for Bookish: Out in the woods, iron in hand and an impossible shot to make: It was the second play-off hole of the 2012 Masters and for most players, the position would have been ho...
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