Top 10 Highest IQ Holders in the World
10. Marilyn Vos Savant (IQ 190)
Born in August 11, 1946, Marilyn Vos Savant is an American magazine
columnist, author, lecturer and playwright. Having an IQ of about 190,
she has several publications to her name and was registered in 1985 in
the Guinness Book of World Records for having the highest IQ among
women. During her childhood, she worked in her father’s general store
and wrote articles in the local newspapers under pseudonyms as she
believed her work to be wanting in some way or the other. She studied
philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis but quit two years
later in the middle of the course to help in a family investment
business. After receiving her IQ score, she began to write as a
columnist in
Parade, solving a variety of mathematical, logical and vocabulary puzzles given to her by the readers.
9. Kim Ung-Yong (IQ 210)
A Korean civil engineer and a former child prodigy, Kim Ung-Yong,
born in 1963, was listed as the highest IQ holder in the Guinness Book
of World Records up to 1990. He obtained an IQ score of 210 as a child
of four years in the test normally given to seven year olds. He started
speaking at only six-months and knew several languages like Japanese,
Korean, German, English before his third birthday. By the age of four,
he had memorized over 2000 words in both English and German and wrote
poetry in Korean and Chinese. He began showcasing his genius from the
age of 14 by solving complex differential and integral calculus problems
on Japanese television. He is currently serving as an adjunct faculty
member Chungbuk National University.
8. Christopher Hirata
Christopher Hirata was the youngest American to win a gold medal in
the International Physics Olympiad at the age of 11. Born in 1982, this
Japanese-American astrophysicist had an IQ of 225 as a child. A child
prodigy at the age of three, he entertained himself at the grocery store
by calculating the total bill of items in his parent’s shopping cart,
item by item, by weight, quantity, discounts and sales tax. He could
read Dr. Seuss to himself, recite the alphabets backwards and code the
alphabet series numerically. By the time he reached 1
st grade
he was playing around with algebra and took college level courses in
physics and multi-variable calculus at the age of 12. He entered CalTech
when he was 14 and by the age of 16, he was working for NASA, on
projects exploring possibilities of colonizing Mars. He earned his PhD
in Physics from Princeton at 22 and is currently teaches astrophysics at
CalTech.
7. Terence Tao (IQ between 160-230)
A child prodigy, Terence Tao, born in 1975, knew basic arithmetic at the age of two. He taught himself numbers and letters from
Sesame Street
at two and attended University level mathematics courses at nine. His
IQ was estimated to be between 220 and 230 during childhood. He
published his first assistant paper at 15 and received both his
Bachelors and Masters degrees at sixteen. Tao has bagged numerous
awards, such as the Salem Prize (2000) and the Clay Research Award
(2013), to name a few. He is a mathematician specializing in harmonic
analysis, additive combinatorics, partial differential equations, random
matrix theory, analytic number theory and ergodic Ramsey theory. He
currently teaches at University of California and has been dubbed as Mr.
Fix-it for frustrated researchers stuck on a problem.
6. Sir Isaac Newton (IQ 190)
Isaac Newton has been a constant in all our physics books since
middle school and hardly needs an introduction. A key figure in the
scientific revolution, he contributed heavily to modern science by
explaining the laws of gravity. His IQ is estimated to be about 190. He
was one of the most influential scientists of all time and discovered
many properties of light and sound. He built the world’s first practical
reflecting telescope and formulated an empirical law of cooling. As a
mathematician he contributed to the study of power series, generalised
the binomial theorem to include non-integer exponents and developed
Newton’s method for approximating the roots of a function.
5. Garry Kasparov (IQ 190)
Considered to be the greatest chess player of all time, Gary
Kasparov, born in 1963, is said to have an IQ of 190. A Russian chess
grandmaster, former world chess champion, a writer and political
activist, Kasparov learned to play chess at the age of 11 and became a
junior champion by 13. He lost to the IBM super computer Deep Blue in a
highly publicized chess matched but stunned the whole world by his sheer
ingenuity, intuition and demonstration of the amazing power of the
human mind.
4. Leonardo da Vinci (IQ 190)
Born in 1452 in Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was believed to have an IQ
of about 190. He was the quintessential Renaissance man with an
insatiable curiosity for knowledge and an obsessive drive for new
inventions. Renowned primarily as a painter for famous works like ‘Mona
Lisa’ and ‘The Last Supper’, he was also an established polymath and
worked in the field of mathematics, engineering, sculpting,
architecture, anatomy, geology, cartography, botany, music and
literature. He was a genius in the truest sense and is revered to this
day for his technological ingenuity. He was centuries ahead of his time
with his detailed concepts and theories of flying machines, concentrated
solar power, hydrodynamics and plate tectonics.
3. Christopher Michael Langan (IQ 195)
Described as the ‘smartest man in America’ by the media, Christopher
Michael Langan is an autodidact with an IQ of 195. He achieved a full
score in his SAT despite napping during the exam. After dropping out of
college due to financial problems, he took a string of labour-intensive
jobs but continued working on his theories and equations. He developed
the ‘Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe’ in isolation and
described it to be a theory of the relationship between mind and
reality.
2. William James Sidis (IQ 195)
An American child prodigy born in New York in 1898, William James
Sidis was believed to have an IQ above 195. He could read the newspaper
at only 18 months and taught himself eight languages by the age of
eight. He also invented a language known as Vendergood during his
childhood. He became a Harvard student by the age of eleven and
graduated cum laude at 16. He knew over 40 languages by the time he was
an adult and specialized in the field of higher mathematics. He was
proficient enough to lecture the Harvard Mathematical Club on
four-dimensional bodies before earning his Bachelors degree. He died of a
cerebral haemorrhage at the young age of forty six.
1. Abdesselam Jelloul (IQ 198)
Abdesselam Jelloul scored 198 in an adult IQ test in 2012. The test
included thirteen dimensions of intelligence-analytical, spatial,
logical, memory, musical, linguistic, philosophical, moral, spiritual,
interpersonal, intra-personal, bodily and naturalist. He holds the
record of the person with the highest ever known advanced IQ test score.
It was one of the most advanced tests to have ever been conducted on
intelligence quotient.
Contributor: Rajasee Chatterjee
