Why Did a Flight Instructor Try to Ground Claude Shannon?

David Senra, reading the book's account, says Claude Shannon's genius was obvious to everybody around him in college, enough that a flight instructor tried to keep him out of the cockpit.

Shannon got interested in learning how to fly. The instructor decided flying was way too dangerous and they could not risk Shannon's mind. The instructor wrote the president of MIT that Shannon was not only unusual but a near genius of most unusual promise, and asked permission to ban Shannon from the cockpit because such a life was not worth risking in a crash.

A few days later the president wrote back. He doubted the advisability of urging a young man to refrain from flying or of arbitrarily taking the opportunity away. On the ground of Shannon being intellectually superior, he separately doubted whether a ban would be good for the development of Shannon's character and personality. Shannon was allowed to continue flying.