While IQ tests aren’t the only indicator of intelligence, it sure is impressive when people have a high IQ score.
Most people worldwide fall between 85 and 115, with an average IQ of 100. However, many people have scored much higher than that.
Here, we’ll review the 50 people with the highest IQs ever. If you’re curious, you can find out your IQ score at Quick IQ Test and see how you compare!
Highest IQ in the World
1. Stephen Hawking: 160
Surprisingly coming in low on the list of highest IQ ever, Hawking was born in Oxford, England, in 1942. He was a physicist and cosmologist who was the first person to discover that black holes emit radiation.
2. Paul Allen: 160-170
Allen was born in Seattle, Washington, in 153. He’s best known as the co-founder of Microsoft.
3. Albert Einstein: 160-190
Born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany, Einstein is known as one of the most influential physicists in history. He’s best known for inventing the theory of relativity.
Related: Albert Einstein IQ
4. Nicolaus Copernicus: 160-200
Copernicus was born in 1473 in Toruń, Poland. He was the first person to create a universe model with the sun at the center.
5. Nikola Tesla: 160-310
Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, modern-day Croatia. With one of the highest IQs ever, he was the creator of the Tesla coil.
6. Emanuel Swedenborg: 165-210
Philosopher, scientist, and theologist, Swedenborg was born in 1688 in Stockholm. His best-known work is Heaven and Hell, a book on the afterlife.
7. Jacob Barnett: 170
Barnett was born in Indianapolis in 1998. He first attended university at the age of ten with no previous schooling.
8. Judit Polgar: 170
Born in 1979 in Budapest, Polgar is a chess grandmaster and considered the best female chess player.
9. Hypatia: 170-210
Hypatia was born between 350 and 370 AD in Alexandria. She was the first female mathematician to have work well recorded.
10. Cleopatra: 180
Cleopatra was born in 69 BC in Alexandria, Egypt. As Queen of Egypt, she was heavily involved in influencing Roman politics.
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Most people worldwide fall between 85 and 115, with an average IQ of 100. However, many people have scored much higher than that.
11. John H. Sununu: 180
Sununu was born in 1939 in Havana. He is a politician who has served as the governor of New Hampshire and White House Chief of Staff.
12. Marie Curie: 180-200
Curie was born in 1867 in Warsaw. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first person to win the Nobel Prize twice.
13. Leonhard Euler: 180-200
Euler was born in Basel, Swiss Confederacy, in 1707. Considered the greatest mathematician of the 18th Century, Euler made significant contributions to the field.
14. Galileo Galilei: 180-200
Galileo was born in 1564 in Pisa, Italy. He’s considered the father of modern science.
15. John Stuart Mill: 180-200
Mill was born in London, England, in 1806. A famous utilitarian philosopher, he’s best known for his works System of Logic, On Liberty, and Utilitarianism.
16. Leonardo da Vinci: 180-210
Da Vinci was born in 1452 in Anchiano, Italy. He’s best known for his artwork, but he also made several scientific discoveries.
17. Gottfried Leibniz: 182-205
Born in 1646 in Leipzig, Germany, Leibniz was a polymath who developed the modern notation for differential and integral calculus.
18. Srinivasa Ramanujan: 185
Ramanujan was born in 1887 in Erode, India. He’s known as one of India’s greatest mathematicians and made significant contributions to elliptic functions, the analytical theory of numbers, and infinite series.
19. Ettore Majorana: 183-200
Italian physicist Majorana was born in 1906 in Catania. He’s famous for postulating the theory that a fermion can be its own antiparticle.
20. Thomas Young: 185-200
Born in 1773 in Milverton, Young is known for his contributions to various fields, including language, Egyptology, and physiology.
21. Philip Emeagwali: 190
Born in Akure, Nigeria, in 1954, Emeagwali is a computer scientist. For his work on an application of the CM-2 massively-parallel computer, he won the Gordon Bell Prize.
22. Mislav Predavec: 190
Predavec was born in 1967 in Zagreb, Croatia. In 2012, he was named the third smartest person in the world by the World Genius Directory.
23. Richard Rosner: 190-195
Rosner was born in 1969 in Los Angeles, California. He’s a television writer, most notably for Jimmy Kimmel Live.
24. Isaac Newton: 190-210
Born in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth in 1643, Newtown is best known for inventing calculus.
25. Voltaire: 190-200
Voltaire was born in 1694 in Paris. A prolific writer, Voltaire is most famous for Lettres philosophiques, one of the best works of French literature.
26. Rudolf Clausius: 190-205
Born in 1822 in Koszalin, Clausius was a physicist and mathematician. He’s considered one of the founding fathers of thermodynamics.
27. Christopher Langan: 190-210
Langan was born in 1952 in San Francisco. He’s a horse rancher who developed a theory called the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe.
28. James Maxwell: 190-210
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1831, Maxwell postulated the theory of electromagnetism, which influenced Einstein’s theory of relativity.
29. Garry Kasparov: 194
Kasparov was born in 1963 in Baku, modern-day Azerbaijan. He held the World Chess Champion title for 14 years.
30. Evangelos Katsioulis: 198
Katsioulis was born in 1976 in Ioannina, Greece. He is a psychiatrist and is famous for his high IQ test scores.
Related: Intelligence Test vs. Emotional Intelligence Test
31. Nadia Camukova: 200
Camukova was born in 1976 in Moscow. She is a professor and can speak seven languages.
32. Francis Galton: 200
Born in Birmingham in 1822, Galton was one of the forefathers of meteorology and invented the weather map.
33. Michael Grost: 200
Grost was born in 1954. He’s a former American child prodigy famous for entering college at age ten.
34. Hugo Grotius: 200
Grotius was born in 1583 in Delft, Netherlands. Of the over 60 texts he wrote in his lifetime, his most notable was The Rights of War and Peace.
35. Thomas Wolsey: 200
Statesman and Catholic bishop, Wosley was born in 1473 in Ipswich, England. He’s known as England’s greatest medieval cardinal.
36. Sho Yano: 200
Yano was born in Portland in 1990. He is known for being the youngest person to get a medical doctorate from the Pritzker School of Medicine.
37. Edith Stern: 200+
Stern was born in 1952 in Brooklyn, New York. She is credited with inventing direct dialing and last-call return.
38. Nathan Leopold: 210
Leopold was born in 1904 in Chicago. He was accepted into Harvard Law School, though he committed murder before beginning his studies and spent 33 years in jail.
39. William Shakespeare: 210
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, around 1564. He’s known most for his plays and poems.
40. Kim Ung-Yong: 210
Ung-Yong was born in 1962 in Seoul. He once held the Guinness World Record for having the highest IQ ever.
41. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: 210-225
Born in 1749 in Frankfurt, Goethe is most famous for his work The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book about a man who sells his soul to the devil.
42. Christopher Hirata: 225
Hirata was born in 1982 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. In 2018, he won a Breakthrough Prize for his research and contribution to the understanding of how the first galaxies formed.
43. Marilyn vos Savant: 228
Born in 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri, Savant was listed as the person with the highest IQ by Guinness World Records.
44. Terence Tao: 225-230
Tao was born in Adelaide in 1975. He’s recognized chiefly for his work in partial differential equations.
45. William James Sidis: 250+
Sidis was born in Manhattan in 1898. Sidis’ most famous work was The Animate and the Inanimate, a book on the origin of life relating to thermodynamics.
46. Carl Gauss: 250-300
Born in 1777 in Brunswick, Germany, Gauss is considered one of the greatest German mathematicians for his many contributions to algebra, statistics, and analysis.
47. Ainan Celeste Cawley: 263
Cawley was born in 1999 in Singapore. At six, he gave his first lecture, and by nine, he could recite pi to 518 decimal places.
48. Marnen Laibow-Koser: 268
Laibow-Koser was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He’s now a composer.
49. Michael Kearney: 325
Kearney was born in Honolulu in 1984. He’s the youngest person to graduate from college in the U.S., at age ten.
50. Adragon De Mello: 400
Born in 1976, De Mello was the youngest person to graduate college in the U.S. for six years until Michael Kearney broke the record.
FAQ
Here are some questions about the highest IQ ever.
What is Elon Musk’s IQ?
Elon Musk’s IQ is 155.
What’s the lowest IQ ever?
The lowest IQ ever would be 0. However, no one has ever scored that. Scores below 75 usually indicate a cognitive disability. Some of the countries with the lowest IQ scores are Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nepal.
Can you raise your IQ?
IQ scores tend to vary from test to test, which is why some people on this list have a range. While it’s possible to raise your IQ score through training, you cannot raise your intelligence.
Final Thoughts: The Highest IQs Ever
While this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s an excellent sample of people with the highest IQs ever. With modern knowledge and technology, it’s interesting to consider what the future holds in terms of high IQ scores.
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