ABOUT FACTS NET

Mysterious

Geniuses

Only approximately 1% of the people in the world have an IQ of 135 or over. Through out history a few chosen people have been born with superior intelligence. Why were they so gifted ? Were their brains any different than ours ? When Einstein's brain was first observed it was said that it look quite normal. Did these people come from super smart parents ? Sometimes they did, other times they didn't. Could it be that they use more of their brain's potential than we do, after all only about 10% of our brains are being used, according to some scientists ? Well I don't have the answers, but we can look at some of these people and maybe draw our own conclusions.

I.Q. Meanings
85 - 114 Average
115 - 124 Above average
125 - 134 Gifted
135 - 144 Highly gifted
145 - 154 Genius
155 - 164 Genius
165 - 179 High genius
180 - 200 Highest genius
200 - Above "Un measurable" genius

A project was conducted to determine the I.Q. of famous people of the past. All their work was examined with special regard to their early years. The following are estimates of their Intelligence Quotients:

I.Q. NAME
190 Newton, Sir Isaac
190 Voltaire
180 da Vinci, Leonardo
180 Hume, David
180 Michelangelo, Buonarroti
175 Kepler, Johannes
175 Spenser, Edmund
175 Spinoza, Baruch
170 Faraday, Michael
170 Händel, George Friedrich
170 Lavoisier, Antoine
170 Luther, Marthin
165 Brontë, Charlotte
165 Bach, Johann Sebastian
165 Hobbes, Thomas
165 Linné, Carl von
165 Locke, John
165 Priestley, Joseph
165 van Beethoven, Ludwig
165 Johnson, Samuel
160 Boyle, Robert
160 Franklin, Benjamin
155 de Cervantes, Miguel
155 Swift, Jonathan
150 Lincoln, Abraham
145 Napoleon, Bonaparte
140 Washington, George
130 Grant, Ulysses S.
130 Drake, Sir Francis

Hypatia of Alexandria - 370 - 415 AD appx. She was a mathematician, astronomer, and Platonic philosopher. Her father had been the last head librarian of the Library at Alexandria and a professor of mathematics in Alexandra. This library later burned and everything was destroyed. She was the author of a commentary on Diophantus, she also wrote a work called The Astronomical Canon and a commentary on The Conics of Apollonius. She had a superior intelligence Her intelligence surpassed that of all other philosophers of her time and her accomplishments in music and science paled all others. He intelligence and knowledge surpassed her father's at an early age. People would come from other cities to hear her talk and learn from her. She was murdered for her beliefs. I.Q. unknown but seems to be in 180 - 200 range.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1749 - 1832. He had an estimated I.Q. of 210. The greatest German writer. At the age of eight he could speak and understand Greek, Latin, French and Italian. He also had a gift for story telling at an early age. He studies law but along with it he studied art, music, anatomy and chemistry. His most famous piece is Faust, which he wrote over the period of his whole life, it was finished when he was 81 years old.

Emanuel Swedenborg - 1688 - 1772. He was born in Sweden. He mastered virtually all the known sciences of his time; writing on mathematics, geology, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, astronomy and anatomy. His I.Q. is estimated at 205.

Gottfried Willhelm von Leibniz - 1646-1716. Born in Germany he had an estimated I.Q. of 205. Leibniz was the greatest polymath of modern philosophers, making contributions to mathematics, jurisprudence, and history, as well as philosophy.

John Stuart Mill - 1806- 1873. He was Born in England. His estimated I.Q. was 200. His entire education was conducted by his father.He became an administrator in the East India Company. Mill was a radical empiricist who held that all human knowledge, including even mathematics and logic, is derived by generalization from sensory experience. Mill's greatest contribution to political theory occurs in On Liberty (1859), where he defended the broadest possible freedom of thought and expression and argued that the state can justify interference with the conduct of individual citizens only when it is clear that doing so will prevent a greater harm to others.

Isaac Newton - 1642 - 1727. Born in England he had an estimated I.Q. of 190. Not only did Newton advance the mathematics of his day, he created many new branches. He seemed to have no interest in anything except science and math.

Imhotep - 2635-2595 B.C. This man was the most famous of all the non royals that ever lived in ancient Egypt. He was the world's first named architect who built Egypt's first pyramid, is often recognized as the world's first doctor, a priest,. scribe, sage, poet, astrologer, and a vizier and chief minister, though this role is unclear, to Djoser (reigned 2630–2611 BC), the second king of Egypt's third dynasty. While there doesn't seem to be enough written about him to estimate his I.Q., I will go out on a limb and say it must have been 170 - 200

Aristotle. 384 - 322 BC. Aristotle was born in 384 BC, at Stagirus, a Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. He was one of the greatest thinkers of all time. I think we would have to estimate his I.Q. somewhere between 190 - 210.
Srinivasa Ramanujan. 1887 - 1920. Ramanujan was India's greatest mathematician and one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived. He failed every subject in college except math, which he totally emerged himself in. Food had to be forced down his throat because he wouldn't stop his calculations to eat. It is impossible to estimate this mans I.Q., since he faired so poorly in all subjects except math, but never the less it must have been extremely high.
William James Sidis. 1898 - 1944. He seems to have been born in the U. S. to Russian immigrants. His father was brilliant.
His IQ was stratospheric. At 18 months he could read from the New York Times. At 3 he was typing and teaching himself Latin and Greek. Before he was old enough to start school he knew German, French, Russian, and Hebrew. The press discovered him at 8, when he was the world's youngest high-schooler. He did not get much privacy after that. As an 11-year-old Harvard man, he was described in the Times as "a wonderfully successful result of a scientific forcing experiment." In later years, when he was found doing menial clerical work, he was featured as an example of what could befall gifted children whose parents pushed them too hard. His I.Q. was estimated to be 250 -300. Some believe that he published many articles under pseudonyms in books and magazines that contain advanced formulas in math and astronomy. It is amazing when you realize that the I.Q. of Leonardo daVinci was estimated at 180 and this child might have possessed a 300 I.Q. Sidis died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 46.

Marilyn Vos Savant. She was born in 1946, is a writer and her I.Q. is believed to be in excess of 218. Marilyn Vos Savant writes a column that generally appears on the inside last page of Parade Magazine, a sixteen-page supplement that is distributed with over a hundred Sunday newspapers throughout the United States.


It is incredible, when you realize such gifted people existed and exist now, and it seems such a waste of their talents when they are pursuing ordinary or semi ordinary lives. Just think what could be accomplished if we could somehow convince these people to work together on a project that would better mankind.


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