The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) was established at Johns Hopkins University in 1971 by Professor Julian Stanley to help youths who reason extremely well mathematically find the educational resources they need to achieve their full potential (Benbow & Stanley, 1983; Keating, 1976; Stanley, 1977; Stanley, Keating, & Fox, 1974). After administering above-grade-level tests to identify students with advanced mathematical reasoning abilities, SMPY provided counseling and created programs to meet their academic needs. Eventually, university-based talent centers were established around the country to continue the practices SMPY pioneered. Because SMPY's methods for developing talent evolved over time in a very pragmatic way, that is, in response to the needs of individual students, the psychological and conceptual bases for this approach have not been especially emphasized in the literature.

In the first edition of this book, for example, Stanley and Benbow (1986) suggested that SMPY was “not concerned much with conceptualizing giftedness” and had “not spent much time contemplating the psychological underpinnings of giftedness” (p. 361). However, Duke University psychologist Michael Wallach, in a review of one of SMPY's early books (Stanley, George, & Solano, 1977), observed that: