Ramsey was renowned for his precocious genius and his interest in every field of inquiry. Once, when expressing an interest in learning German, a friend passed him Ernst Mach's Analysis of Sensations--a complicated enough text in any language--and told him to go through it with a dictionary and grammar guide. Twelve days later Ramsey had returned having mastered the German language sufficiently to not only read the book, but also to have critiqued its arguments and pointed out several logical flaws.