A person is smart or intelligent to the extent they are capable of learning or acquiring knowledge and using it in novel ways. A person’s smartness is also indicated by their problem-solving abilities. There were many smart people in human history such as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Richard Feynman, etc. However, do you know about the smartest people in the world who are now living, and sharing this planet with us?
Well, below is an interesting list of the 27 Smartest People in the world or top genius in the world:-
1. Elon Musk – IQ 155
Elon Musk is one of the most successful entrepreneurs and richest business, and one of the smartest people in the world magnates on the planet right now. He is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He has dreams of colonizing Mars.
Also read: Elon Musk Net Worth & Lesser-known Interesting Facts
2. Edward Witten – IQ Unkown
Edward Witten is one of the most brilliant physicists of our time. He has made important contributions to the field of quantum gravity, String theory, M-theory, and supersymmetry.
3. Noam Chomsky – IQ 140
Noam Chomsky is the father of modern linguistics. His work revolutionized fields as varied as artificial intelligence and music theory. Chomsky is one of the most important public intellectuals on the planet.
4. Manahel Thabet – IQ 168
Manahel Thabet is a scientist, economist, and consultant. Her IQ is 168 which puts her in the 0.1% of the human population with the highest IQs.
5. Judit Polgár – IQ 170
Polgár became a chess grandmaster when she was only 11 years old. She was a child prodigy and her father raised her with the philosophy “geniuses are made, not born.”
6. Andrew Wiles – IQ 170
Andrew Wiles is an English mathematician who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1995. This 358-year-old problem was considered one of the most difficult math problems.
7. Grigori Perelman – IQ 172
Perelman was awarded Field Medal, widely considered a Nobel in Mathematics, for his work. However, he refused the award saying he wasn’t interested in money or, fame.
8. John Sununu – IQ 180
Sununu is a mechanical engineer. He is also a member of Mega Society, a society that consists of people with very high IQ scores. His IQ is 180.
9. Ruth Lawrence – IQ 190
Lawrence was a child prodigy. She is a mathematician who obtained her bachelor’s degree from Oxford at the age of 13.
Smartest person in the world?
10. Magnus Carlsen – IQ 190
The chess veteran Garry Kasparov used to privately coach Carlsen until 2010. He is the youngest person to rank first in the World Chess Champion.
11. Saul Kripke – IQ 159
In his teenage, Kripke wrote a series of papers that made important contributions in the field of modal logic.
12. Benjamin Netanyahu – IQ 180
Benjamin Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister who was born in Israel after the state’s establishment. He possesses an IQ of 180.
13. Akshay Venkatesh – IQ Unknown
Venkatesh won the International Mathematical Olympiad when he was just 11. He also obtained a Ph.D. from Princeton at the age of 20.
14. Shahriar Afshar – IQ 170
Shahriar Afshar is an Iranian American Physicist, entrepreneur, and inventor. He has made many ground-breaking inventions.
15. Steven Pinker – IQ Unkonwn
Steven Pinker is a psycho-linguistics and visual cognition expert. He also counts as one of the most influential public intellectuals.
Smartest people in the world?
16. Evangelos Katsioulis – IQ 205
Evangelos Katsioulis has unmatched intelligence; it is estimated, by only 1 in every 300 million people. He has an IQ of 198. Evangelos is one of the smartest people in the world alive.
17. Donald Knuth – IQ Unknown
Knuth is an influential commuter scientist and mathematician. He is considered the father of algorithmic analysis.
18. James Woods – IQ 184
Woods has worked in many Hollywood films. Besides being an actor, Woods is also a graduate student of political science at MIT.
19. Mislav Predavec – IQ 190
Mislav Predavec is a Croatian mathematician. He has an enormous IQ of 190 and cites solving difficult intelligence tests as his favorite hobby.
Smartest individuals in the world:-
20. Marilyn Vos Savant – IQ 228, one of the highest ever recorded
Marilyn Vos Savant was described in The Guinness Book of World Records as the person having the highest recorded IQ score in 1986.
21. Paul Allen – IQ 170
Allen co-founded Microsoft but resigned from his post after suffering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In 2003, he founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
22. Garry Kasparov – IQ 135
Garry Kasparov is a legendary chess player who used to privately coach Magnus Carlsen, another renowned chess player.
23. Christopher Langan – IQ 195
Langan taught himself reading when he was just 4 years old. He dropped out of college but became an autodidact and developed his famous theory of the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. The CTMU is the first “self-simulation” theory of reality, a reflexive, tautological, and profoundly self-contained intrinsic language through which reality exists and evolves by “talking to itself about itself”, thus serving as its own theory, universe, and model. Combining physics, metaphysics, and biology in a tight, elegant, and unique logico-semiotic structure called the Metaformal System, the CTMU provides a long-sought bridge between mind and matter, science and spirituality, and the internal and external aspects of human and cosmic existence.
24. Richard Rosner – IQ 192
Rosner has done a great variety of jobs in his life. Before writing scripts for shows like Jimmy Kimmel, he had worked as a doorman, stripper, waiter, and a male model. He possesses an IQ of 190.
25. Kim Ung-Yong – IQ 210
Kim Ung-Yong started his university education when he was just 3 years old. He is a South Koran civil engineer who finished his Ph.D. by the time he was 16. He has an IQ of 210.
26. Christopher Hirata – IQ 225
Hirata is the youngest U.S. citizen to receive an International Physics Olympiad gold medal. He won the gold medal when he was just 13 years old. His IQ is 225. He is one of the smartest people in the world.
27. Terence Tao – IQ 230
Terence Tao is one of the smartest people in the world often described as the ‘Mozart of Maths’. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degree at 16 and earned his Ph.D. at 20. He has an IQ of 230.
