Smartest Person in the World
People argue as to who is the smartest person in the world. Before discussing that, we need to define "smart" first. It is commonly defined as: [having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability]. So being smart means the ability to react to situations in a quick and intelligent manner.
The most popular measure of intelligence is the IQ test. This assessment usually "attempts" to measure a person's ability to solve different types of problems such as language, mathematics, spatial and logic.
Another measure of intelligence is success in life, including achievements and accomplishments. This article will touch both measures. One based on IQ scores and another based on achievements in life.
The first list will contain individuals with the highest IQs:
| Abdesselam Jelloul: (33 years old) he has an IQ of 198 which was scored in a 2013 Advanced IQ test (200 questions) |
| William Sidis: Scored 197 and is a child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. |
| Marilyn vos Savant: Scored an IQ of 185 (she actually scored 230 as a child which converts to 185 as an adult) |
| Bobby Fischer: Scored 187 and is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author. |
| Kim Ung-yong: Scored an IQ of 170 (he actually score 210 as a child but when converted to an adult score it becomes 170) |
Most Intelligent Person in the World
There are many more individuals with high IQ scores but these scores are sometimes less significant than life achievements. Since the IQ tests only started in the 20th century, geniuses like Da Vinci and Aristotle did not have a chance to take the test. Therefore we created this list of smartest people based on achievements:
| Nikola Tesla: Inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist. Best known for his design of the modern alternating current (AC) and wireless technology. |
| Leonardo da Vinci: Polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, inventor...He is widely considered to be one of the greatest geniuses of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. |
| Archimedes of Syracuse: Considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. He used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. |
| Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosopher primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics... |
| Isaac Newton: Physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist... |
| Galileo Galilei: Physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. |
| Albert Einstein: Theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, contributing to a revolution in physics. |
| Aristotle: Greek philosopher and polymath, who wrote about physics, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, ethics, biology... |
| Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz: He discovered calculus and the binary system and developed the infinitesimal calculus. |
| Judit Polgár: Youngest Chess Grandmaster at the age of 15. At age five she defeated a family friend without looking at the board. After the game the friend joked, "You are good at chess, but I'm a good cook." Judit replied, "Do you cook without looking at the stove?" |
| Eratosthenes: Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth without leaving Egypt. |
| W. E. B. Du Bois: Sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. He became a professor of history, sociology and economics. |
| Grigori Y. Perelman: Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology. Perelman proved the soul and Thurston's geometrization conjecture, which consequently solved in the affirmative the Poincaré conjecture. |
| Alhazen Ibn al-Haytham: Genius who made significant contributions in the 10th century to the principles of optics, as well as to physics, astronomy, mathematics, ophthalmology, philosophy, visual perception, and to the scientific method which is used to this day. |
| Helen Keller: Author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts. Keller learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading their lips with her hands. |
| Stephen Hawking: Theoretical physicist and author. Worked theorems on gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. |
Conclusion: IQ tests are a mere hint of someone's intelligence. It is not the sole measure of one's abilities. It can only measure 30% of what people can do with their brain. Also, people can improve their IQ score (up to 25%) by simply taking different types of IQ tests. Sometimes people fail to answer a question not because they don't know the answer but because they don't understand the question.
| Advanced IQ Test |
Riddle of the day: A prisoner is told "If you tell a lie we will hang you; if you tell the truth we will shoot you." What can he say to save himself? |
| Show Answer |