“Developmental Antecedents of Achieved Eminence”, 1987 (; backlinks; similar):
[Literature review of Simonton & other’s research into life history predictors of great accomplishment in the arts/sciences/politics/etc, particularly childhood: what variables seem to correlate with later eminence? Simonton discusses as predictors: 1. intelligence; 2. birth order (first-born); 3. extreme motivation/drive; 3. parental loss/orphanhood (!); 4. a previous generation of role models to imitate; 5. formal education (or lack thereof); 6. global circumstances/‘zeitgeist’.
On nature-nurture, Simonton deprecates the role of genetics, arguing that genius counts fluctuate too much and are too sporadic over time to reflect primarily genetics, but see Lykken et al on ‘emergenesis’, dysgenics, and tail effects in order statistics (especially the Lotka curve/log-normal distribution ‘leaky pipeline’ Simonton is so familiar with) for why this argument is weak.]