The smartest people in the world throughout history: list, ranking and achievements. The smartest person in the world What is the smartest person on earth

Every day we meet thousands of people on the street. They go about their business, talking to each other. They have the most ordinary, typical appearance, they do not stand out in any way. But this is only at first glance. Who knows, maybe among the passers-by there are people whose IQ is approaching 200? This article will talk about geniuses whose mental abilities are phenomenal.

Development of intelligence

Let's turn to history. In the early stages of development, humanity was not distinguished by great intellectual abilities. Everyone was at approximately the same stage of development, so their level of intelligence was almost the same.

The emergence and development of science, culture and religion led to the stratification of society depending on mental abilities. So-called geniuses appeared, people who were far superior to their contemporaries in development and abilities.

The concept of “the smartest person on earth” became established in the value system of society much later, when scientists began to study the human mind. Thus, according to research, children in whose upbringing the main role is played by their parents, and not by any other relatives from older generations (grandfathers, grandmothers), develop faster than their peers. The overwhelming majority of abilities are transmitted from the mother, and 20% of them depend on the environment in which the child lives and grows.

An interesting fact is that the average IQ of women and men is the same and is equal to 120 points, but at the same time, among the stronger sex there is a greater number of radical manifestations of mental abilities: genius and stupidity.

Intelligence scores

A system of IQ tests helps researchers determine who deserves the title of “the smartest person on earth.” This abbreviation can be deciphered when translated into Russian as follows - this is the coefficient of intellectual development.

Research by scientists in this area began in the 30s of the last century. They were not originally put into dough form. These were experiments whose purpose was to establish a connection between human and different types of human reactions, the dependence of the mental development of children on the genetic inheritance of their parents.

Later, the smartest person on earth began to be determined using special IQ tests. At the current stage of development, they consist of various mathematical problems in which it is necessary to determine a pattern and restore the sequence of numbers, find an “extra” geometric figure that does not fit a given series, etc.

It should be noted that IQ tests are often not objective, since they must be designed for a certain age of the recipient. If no age indication is provided, the test may give false results. It is also believed that such a method for determining the level of intelligence cannot provide reliable information also because it contains many similar tasks, the solution of which can be brought to automation.

Brilliant Russian

Our country has always been famous for gifted people, so it is not surprising that in its vastness a phenomenon was born, the smartest person on earth. This is Grigory Perelman. He devoted his life entirely to mathematical research. But his uniqueness lies not only in his incredible level of intelligence. This person does not strive for fame, so most often he refuses interviews with journalists. He does not need prizes or any recognition of his talent. Perelman doesn't even care much about his appearance. His main goal is to study mathematics and calculate using complex formulas. This is the smartest man on earth. You won’t find his photo in newspapers, because a true scientist does not need recognition.

The smartest man in the world

It’s impossible not to say something about who has become a real phenomenon. in the entire history of mankind - this is an American with Ukrainian roots, William Sidis. He was born in 1898 in New York and amazed those around him with his extraordinary abilities from the age of one and a half years. At 18 months he was able to read the Times newspaper, and at the age of eight he was already the author of four books, including a serious scientific monograph on human anatomy.

W. Sidis is one of the youngest students at Harvard, having managed to enter this prestigious educational institution at the age of 11. By 1912, the young man was already giving lectures on higher mathematics in one of the circles of this university. He was predicted to have a great future in the field of mathematical research.

The smartest child

Among children there are also geniuses who show extraordinary talents at an early age. In 2007, thanks to some reputable intelligence tests, the smartest person on earth was determined - a 3-year-old girl, Eliza Tan-Roberts. She became the youngest member of the Mensa club in the UK since its inception. Her IQ is 156 points, while the great Albert Einstein has this figure only four units higher.

Prospects for geniuses

The smartest person on earth will never have difficulty getting a job. Every enterprise needs progressive specialists in technical fields, including the military-industrial complexes of different countries.

Another career option for geniuses is the creation of theoretical treatises, textbooks and monographs designed to systematize knowledge from various fields of science.

There are many miracles in the world, one of these mysteries that scientists have not been able to solve for many decades is the question of the genius of some people, whose mental abilities are simply amazing. It is quite difficult to say unmistakably who is worthy of the title of the smartest person in the world or in Russia, because each of the applicants has their own individual abilities.

Very often, after solving some life problem, we can hear the statement addressed to us: “You are the smartest person on earth.” We are glad that our efforts were noticed, but at the same time we don’t think about what kind of person he is - really the smartest person on the planet, what talents does he have and what can he do with the power of his mind? The only thing that can be said is that all brilliant people throughout history were united.

How to measure intelligence

In the modern world, identifying people with high performance and mentality is very simple - an IQ test was invented for this purpose. This test was originally invented by the English psychologist Hans Eysenck in order to accurately determine the smartest person in history.

Now the test has become widespread and everyone can try their hand. At the development stage, the test was used only on children, but in 1905 it was refined by psychologist Alfred Binet and became suitable for use on adults. The test was first used in 1916, but even its results failed to determine a person’s special talents. The idea that the smartest people who ever lived on the planet achieved success in life through constant work is still relevant in our time.

To make it clearer to most readers, the average IQ for average people is 90–110 units, for people with weak mental abilities the coefficient is less than 70%, for those who can develop their abilities and achieve something - 125–135%, and only 0. 5% of all people on the planet have an IQ above 135 - they are usually called geniuses.

All Nobel laureates take an IQ test, and most of them score 160. Unfortunately, there are people with high mental abilities who have never managed to distinguish themselves in anything and have not found an application for their talent. Such people in most cases go crazy or commit suicide.

The highest intelligence score ever was possessed by a ten-year-old girl born in 1946. A girl named Marilyn Vos Savant managed to score 228 units based on the results of the entire test. So far, no one has managed to score more than this little girl, and she is considered to this day the smartest person in history. According to the owner of this unusual title, only such disciplines as mathematics and nuclear physics can reflect high human abilities. Marilyn married a man as gifted as herself - her husband Robert Jarvik (his IQ is 180 units) invented an artificial heart. Marilyn also claims that with the help of proper nutrition, everything that is inherited by a person can be increased by 20%.

Our country also has something to be proud of, since our compatriot is listed in the Guinness Book as the first person who managed to prove the Poincaré theorem. He is Grigory Perelman, born in 1966, he is considered the smartest person in Russia.

Now many people consider Anatoly Wasserman the smartest person in the country; he often won in various television shows.

Top Smartest on Earth

If we consider the issue of genius more globally, then we can confidently note that in every corner of the world there are special and unusual people. Now we will try to recreate the top of the smartest people, based on their IQ results and the successes that they were able to achieve in their lives.

So, in first place, as mentioned above, is Marilyn Savant.

She is only 10 units behind the Chinese genius Kim Pik, who has a phenomenal memory.

He is also included in the Guinness Book of Records, as he can remember 98% of all information he reads. Throughout his life, Kim Peak retained more than 12 thousand books in his memory, which he could recite by heart in different orders.

Daniel Tammet from the UK, born in 1979, can mentally calculate and solve complex problems in the field of mathematics.

Daniel also managed to master a new language within a week. In total he knows 11 languages. At age 4, he could easily multiply and divide multi-digit numbers. As he himself claims, such abilities appeared to him after suffering an attack of epilepsy in childhood.

Albert Einstein is also on the list of greatest people.

The German physicist became known to modern times thanks to the theory of relativity. Much to our surprise, we can say that as a child, Einstein was not a very active child - he spoke poorly, he was generally considered underdeveloped and mentally retarded.

The name of the next genius is probably known to all modern people - Stephen Hawking, an outstanding theoretical physicist, is one of the few people who know about the structure of the Cosmos.

A cripple, in a wheelchair, who does not control his body, lives an incredibly busy life: he teaches, acts in films, publishes scientific works and travels. His IQ is much lower than most of the inhabitants of this list, but nevertheless he managed to change his life and most modern people with his lectures and scientific treatises.

Arran Fernandez is the first person to obtain a Secondary Education Certificate at age 5. At the age of 14, he became a student at Cambridge University and is the most talented and youngest mathematician in the world.

Paul Allen is the man who co-founded Microsoft. His IQ is only 170 units, but this did not stop him from becoming a big man and putting his skills into practice.

Manahel Thabet is a Yemeni woman, economist, and the youngest Arab woman to receive a PhD in financial engineering. Her IQ is 168.

Another woman who impressed with her talent as a strategist is Judit Polgar, a chess grandmaster originally from Hungary. Her IQ is 170.

John Sununu, with an IQ of 180 and three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became famous for his political career.

In addition to his unprecedented successes in science, he worked in the administration of President George H. W. Bush.

It would take a very long time to count talented people, because there are so many of them. Using the example of several of the above personalities, we have shown that there are people today who can improve things with the help of their intelligence and wisdom.

Most of these people with genius abilities today lead an unpretentious lifestyle. As almost every one of them claims, they do not consider themselves special, because an unusual mindset is a gift of nature with which they were endowed.

Video about five great minds of humanity:

Marilyn Savant

American writer, playwright and journalist, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the owner of the world's highest IQ. She entered Washington University in St. Louis, but was forced to leave it in order to help her family in the investment business. Since August 1987, she has been married to Robert Jarvik, a scientist who became famous as the creator of the artificial heart. She currently lives in New York, where she is the CFO of the Jarvik Heart Corporation, where she is also involved in cardiovascular disease research. From 1986 to 1989 she was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the owner of the highest IQ - 230 units.

Kim Peek

An American with a phenomenal memory. I remembered up to 98 percent of the information I read. For this he received the nickname “Kim-pewter”. He became the prototype for the film “Rain Man” by Dustin Hoffman. Could read one standard book spread in just 8-10 seconds. And he didn’t care how the text was positioned relative to him. By the end of his life, Kim Pik stored in his memory almost 12 thousand books he had studied. Kim Peek was born in 1951 in Salt Lake City, America, and died there in 2009. A phenomenal man was born with a disproportionately large head, and on the back of his head there was a cranial hernia the size of a baseball. In addition, Kim had damage to the cerebellum and was missing the corpus callosum, which should connect the left and right hemispheres of the brain. However, all these congenital defects do not lead to giftedness or mental retardation. Scientists speculate that the brain's neurons made new connections in the absence of the corpus callosum. This made Kim's memory almost immense.

Daniel Tammet

The mind of one of the smartest people in the world has a slightly different direction - the British Daniel Tammet. This man became famous for his ability to mentally perform complex mathematical calculations that an ordinary person could only do with the help of special computing equipment. In addition, Dan knows 11 languages ​​and can name twenty-two thousand digits after the decimal point of Pi. Another feature of this 34-year-old man is his orientation. Daniel is homosexual and currently lives with his friend, photographer Jerome Tabot.

Albert Einstein

Greatest mind. The German physicist was included in the list of the 10 smartest people in the history of mankind. The theory of relativity brought him fame. In general, Einstein wrote more than 300 scientific papers. The theoretical physicist was born in Germany in 1879, lived in his native country, as well as Switzerland and the USA. Died at the age of 76. During his life he became one of the founders of modern theoretical physics and a Nobel Prize laureate. Honorary doctorate from 20 leading universities in the world. He developed several significant theories, including the general and special theories of relativity, the quantum theory of the thermal effect and heat capacity.

Arran Fernandez

English prodigy, currently the youngest student at Cambridge University. Born in June 1995, he was educated at home, which enabled him to sit his GCSE at the age of five. In January 2010, he was admitted as an exception to the Cambridge College of Mathematics. University officials said they do not remember admitting students so young since 1773, when William Pitt enrolled at the age of 14. Since 2000, he has published several papers in the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, a number-theoretic database created by Neil Sloan.

Gregory Smith

Gregory Smith was born in 1990. And already at the age of 2 years he learned to read. At the age of 10 he entered university. The boy is engaged not only in exact sciences. A multifaceted genius He travels the world as an activist for children's rights. He founded the International Youth Advocates movement, which tries to achieve understanding among children around the world. Gregory Smith was honored with a conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton. He was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize, but never received it.

Assessing a person’s intellectual level in quantitative terms began in 1912, when the German scientist William Stern introduced the concept of “Intelligence Quotient,” or IQ. The IQ level is determined on the basis of special tests that determine a person’s thinking abilities (not to be confused with erudition). The average IQ level is 100 units, and an indicator of less than 70 characterizes a person’s mental retardation.

According to statistics:

50% of people have an IQ between 90-110 units;

2.5% of people have an intelligence of 130 to 140 units;

2.5% of people have an IQ below 70;

0.5% of people have an IQ above 140 units and are called geniuses.

For example, the average IQ of Nobel Prize winners is 155-165.

The Nobel laureates were surpassed by as much as fifty units by Korean citizen Kim Ung-Yong, who was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the smartest person in the world. His IQ is 210.

Kim Ung-Yong is called the Korean genius. He was born on March 7, 1963, and from a very early age he began to exhibit the abilities of a child prodigy. At six months he said his first word, and at one year he could speak freely, at three he began to read in Korean, Japanese, German and English.

In early childhood, Kim began to write poetry and showed himself to be a magnificent artist.

At the age of three, he gave an interview to LOOK magazine, where he announced his intention to become president in the future, and also expressed regret about the division of Korea and predicted that the first nation to set foot on the moon would dominate the world.

From the age of four to seven, Kim Ung-Yong attended classes at the University of Hanyang as a free student, and at the age of seven he moved to the United States at the invitation of the American Space Agency. In 1974, after graduating from the University of Colorado with a PhD in physics, Kim began working for NASA. In 1978 he returned to his homeland. Kim Ung-Yong is the author of more than 90 scientific papers.

The list of the smartest people on the planet also includes:

Christopher Mike Langan (USA) – IQ 195. Handyman and rancher. The smartest person in the USA.

Philip Emegwali (Nigeria) - IQ 190. Engineer, inventor, geologist.

Garry Kasparov – IQ 190 (Russia). World chess champion, author of books on chess.

John H. Sununu (Cuba) – IQ 180. Former Governor of New Hampshire and White House staffer.

Judith Polgar (Hungary) – IQ 170. Chess grandmaster, winner of the chess title “Woman of the Century”.

Stephen Hawking (Great Britain) – IQ 160. World-famous theoretical physicist, suffering from neuromuscular dystrophy and almost completely paralyzed.

William James Sidis (USA) – IQ 250. American prodigy, a native of a family of Russian Jewish emigrants, who in 1909, at the age of 11, became the youngest student in the history of Harvard University. He studied history, cosmology, psychology and was distinguished by eccentric antics. He died in 1944 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

The smartest people in the world in history

How to determine how smart a person is? How to measure the amount of intelligence? Disputes on this topic will continue endlessly. We want to introduce you to people whose IQ level is the highest on our planet.

Terence Tao is an Australian mathematician working on the analysis of partial differential equations with additions of combinatorics, Ramsey ergodic theory, random matrix theory and analytic number theory.

Tao has an outstanding IQ of 230. He has amazed people since childhood and received many awards:

• Research Award in 2003;
• Bocher Memorial Prize in 2002;
• Salem Prize in 2000.

He became the youngest professor at the famous University of California.

She is said to have an outstanding IQ of 228. She is a magazine columnist, writer, lecturer, and playwright who became famous for being included in the Book of Records as the person with the highest IQ.

Since 1986, the magazine “Ask Marilyn” has been published, with a Sunday advice column where she solves puzzles and answers questions on various topics.

Christopher Hirata has an IQ of about 225, which is phenomenal. He was a genius since childhood. At the age of 16, he was already working with NASA, developing solutions to conquer Mars. At the age of 22, he received his doctorate from Princeton University.

Currently, Hirata teaches astrophysics at the famous California Institute of Technology.

Kim Un-young is a Korean engineer who has an IQ of 210. Un-young is considered a child prodigy. At the age of six months, he began to speak Korean and understood other languages.

At the age of 14, he could solve complex calculus problems, which were broadcast live on Japanese television. He was also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rick Rosner is another one of the smartest people in the world. Rick is an American television producer gifted with an astonishing IQ of 192. Richard Rosner became widely known for creating a television show. He later developed portable satellite television in partnership with DirecTV.