# Was Albert Einstein Really the Smartest Human? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 11, 2015, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405 "2015-02-11T18:40:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/41 "2015-02-12T04:37:04Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > There are some ideas whose time has come, and will be discovered no matter who is around. Then there are ideas that come from left field with an unexpected stroke of genius and inspiration. They jump us forward in unpredictable leaps. > > Some ideas need a confluence of support from various disparate sources to make work. GR is clearly one. SR was going to be codified within the decade even if Einstein had never lived. GR may have taken quite a while longer. Hard to know. Once the genie was out of the bottle for the revival of serious theoretical physics there was no end of seriously smart people working on it. A specialist cite would be nice for the confluences leading to GR, and the surety of codification of SR by 1910. > [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > The first couple of decades must have been the most intensely exciting time in the entire history of physics. Cutting it off at two decades omits the great, still-resonating thunderclap of Quantum Mechanics, first discovered in 1925. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/42 "2015-02-12T05:08:14Z")
Hilbert. I was confusing the name with Dr. Hibbard from The Simpsons. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/43 "2015-02-12T05:24:51Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > A specialist cite would be nice for the confluences leading to GR, and the surety of codification of SR by 1910. I should leave it to others more versed, but it was clear that Minkowski and others were hot on the tail of SR. GR needed [Riemannian geometry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemannian_geometry) - and that was close enough in history that a delay in it could have delayed GR. > [@](#): > > Cutting it off at two decades omits the great, still-resonating thunderclap of Quantum Mechanics, first discovered in 1925. True, I really mean the first few - say up to the mid 30’s. When you point to the start of QM is a bit harder. Einstein had already received the Nobel in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect. Shrodinger of course is closer for real Q Mechanics, not just Q. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/44 "2015-02-12T05:59:25Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I’ve heard IQ can’t really be measured above 160. Not sure how true that is. > > There have been several people who currently live whose IQs have been estimated to be in the low 200s (200-230). Kim Ung-Yong, Terrance Tao, Christopher Hirata, etc. That would give them an IQ about 50 points above Einstein. > > Malcolm Gladwell once claimed that an IQ above about 130 stops being relevant. He compared to to height in the NBA. There is a rough minimum height needed to succeed in the NBA, but there is no guarantee the 7’2" player is better than the 6’5" player. It is possibly the same with IQ. You may need an IQ of 130+ to be a productive scientist or researcher, but the guy with a 190 IQ may not be as productive or innovative as the guy with a 150 IQ. There are two IQ tests commonly used in the US schools, and they have limits of 140 and 150. You can extrapolate higher, but there’s no need to. Anyone with a higher IQ simply “exceeds standards,” and that’s all you need to know, because the purpose of an IQ test is to identify people on the low end who need help, not people on the high end so we can ohh and ahh. Knowing that a child has a realistic, but high IQ can be important (130, for example), because that child might still be struggling for some reason, and needs to be identified. But anyone who scores beyond the range of the test doesn’t need help academically, and therefore there’s no need to put an actual number on that kid, because you won’t be tracking him. Marilyn vos Savant’s famous high IQ is an extrapolation, BTW. the test she took couldn’t mathematically score someone higher than, IIRC, 180, but she fudged the results because she apparently completed the test in a shorter amount of time than it was possible to compute a score for, and it had to do with the age at which she took it-- the older you are when you take a test, the lower your ceiling score, because the test compares your physical age to your mental age, and the questions aren’t designed for anyone over the age of 18. Anyway, talking about who has the highest IQ is pointless. IQ tests are a tool for dealing with people on the low end of the scale. If you want to talk about who the smartest person was, you have to agree on terms. Leonardo was more well-rounded than Einstein, and Einstein was probably more well-rounded than Newton, who seems to have lacked in social skills. But does that matter. Einstein was a polyglot. Stephen Hawking did a great deal of his best work under exceptional challenges-- before he could even start outputting his work, he had to figure out how he was going to communicate, and then he probably wins for perseverance. But maybe the smartest person had an even smaller output, and also managed to have a family and a personal life. Or maybe the smartest person is the violinist Joshua Bell. His is a musical genius, and he was also a straight-A student (I knew him in high school-- we were in the same b’nei mitvah class at shul), and could have done other things if he hadn’t been a violin prodigy. He also is one of the kindest people you will ever meet, and a good family man. Does the smartest person have to be a physicist? maybe it’s Dr. Paul Offit, the man who invented the current rotavirus vaccine, and has willingly been the face of the vaccine “industry” during the current crisis, and published six or seven books, all while continuing his medical research. I can think of a lot of things that I would propose as criteria for “smartest person” that put Einstein out of the running. But he might still be “greatest physicist,” and better yet, “greatest 20th century physicist.” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/45 "2015-02-12T11:03:38Z")
It’s not possible to assign someone an I.Q. higher than 200 using the current definition of I.Q. The current definition involves ranking everyone within some group linearly and assuming that they fall into a normal curve. You let the mean of the normal curve be 100 and let 15 points be the standard deviation. That means that the highest I.Q. in a set of about 100 billion person would have an I.Q. of about 200 (i.e., six and two-thirds standard deviations higher than the mean). There have only been about 100 billion people over the entire existence of the human race, so 200 is the highest possible I.Q. that could be assigned, even if you could somehow rank everyone who ever lived in intelligence. There is an older definition of I.Q. that involves a different test for each age group. You give a child all of the different tests and find the one for the highest age group that they can pass (where passing the test means that you’re of average intelligence for that age group). The I.Q. on this definition is the mental age (the age group of the highest test passed) divided by the actual age of the child, multiplied by 100. So if a seven-year-old passes the test for sixteen-year-olds, the I.Q. is (16/7) times 100, which is approximately 228. Marilyn vos Savant’s I.Q. is often given as 228, but that’s only possible by the older definition. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/46 "2015-02-12T11:15:24Z")
Rivkah Chaya writes: \> Or maybe the smartest person is the violinist Joshua Bell. His is a musical genius, \> and he was also a straight-A student (I knew him in high school-- we were in the \> same b’nei mitvah class at shul), and could have done other things if he hadn’t \> been a violin prodigy. But would he have been able to do research on physics in the Metro if he had become a physicist, and would people have given him more than $32.17? ---
**Author:** ![Vaevictis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f04885/32.png) [@Vaevictis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vaevictis)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/47 "2015-02-12T16:33:13Z")
$32.17? Try 75,000 bucks for the Fisher prize ([Violinist Bell wins $75,000 Fisher Prize - CNN.com](http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/05/joshuabell.fisher/index.html)), but that must be chump change to him if the wiki is right that he plays a 1713 Stradivarius. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/48 "2015-02-12T16:55:37Z")
> [@Vaevictis](#): > > $32.17? Try 75,000 bucks for the Fisher prize ([http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/05/joshuabell.fisher/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/05/joshuabell.fisher/index.html)), but that must be chump change to him if the wiki is right that he plays a 1713 Stradivarius. I don’t think he owns the Stradivarius. IIRC, all those Cremona instruments are owned by companies that lend them out to the best players, and get a little plug in the programs (plus probably tax benefits). The insurance for them is astronomical, aside from the original cost of the instrument. Josh does travel with the thing handcuffed to his wrist. ---
**Author:** ![bleach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bleach/32/3106_2.png) [@bleach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bleach)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/49 "2015-02-12T18:30:03Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Hilbert. I was confusing the name with Dr. Hibbard from The Simpsons. [Hibbert](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Hibbert) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Vaevictis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f04885/32.png) [@Vaevictis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vaevictis)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/50 "2015-02-12T18:35:23Z")
Thanks for the info on the violin, Rivkah. I had no idea that is how it works, very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Loch\_Raven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/779978/32.png) [@Loch\_Raven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loch_Raven)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/51 "2015-02-12T19:15:00Z")
My vote is for Newton. Not that Einstein was a dope, but Newton brought into being the foundations everyone else built on. As a bonus, he wrote _Opticks_ in English, bringing the language into the scientific arena. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/52 "2015-02-12T21:51:50Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I thought Einstein gets more buzz because they preserved his brain and it’s supposedly anomalous compared to normal people. I bet Ramanujan was of comparable intelligence, but no one’s putting his brain in a jar. This is untrue. Years of study were hard put to find anything remarkable about Einstein’s preserved brain. It was an ordinary brain. Finally someone discovered that there were more glial cells than usual, but glial cells are IIRC connective matter not known to bear upon cognitive ability. ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/53 "2015-02-12T22:33:50Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > But would he have been able to do research on physics in the Metro if he had become a physicist, and would people have given him more than $32.17? [I remember reading the original article when it came out.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell#Washington_Post_experiment) I used to commute on the Metro but didn’t go through that station. I wonder if I would have stopped. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/54 "2015-02-12T23:49:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **RivkahChaya** : > > Does the smartest person have to be a physicist? maybe it’s Dr. Paul Offit, the man who invented the current rotavirus vaccine, and has willingly been the face of the vaccine “industry” during the current crisis, and published six or seven books, all while continuing his medical research. Just in case it wasn’t clear, I don’t claim that the smartest person was necessarily a physicist. I talked about the smartest physicists only because that’s the only subject in which I can make an informed judgement. I can’t even begin to imagine how to compare absolute “intelligence” between fields, even fields as close as different sciences, much less science vs. art or the like. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/55 "2015-02-20T21:34:58Z")
I thought of this thread when I saw [this list of “30 Smartest People Alive Today.”](http://superscholar.org/smartest-people-alive/) (Note that the text only claims that these are “30 _of the_ smartest people alive today,” not necessarily “_the 30 smartest_.”) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/56 "2015-02-21T02:01:50Z")
O.K., let’s go through that list that Thudlow Boink lined to. First of all, using the usual definition of I.Q. these days, to be one of the 30 smartest people in the world, you would have to have an I.Q. of about 187 or higher. Nobody has an I.Q. of more than 200, because even if you’re the smartest person in the entire existence of the human race, there have only been about 100 billion people. To be honest, you should never trust any claim of an I.Q. higher than 160. So let’s look at that list: 1. Paul Allen - O.K., he made a lot of money. Some people who also did so are that brilliant. There’s little evidence that he’s one of the 30 smartest. 2. Christopher Langan - We’ve discussed him before, so do a search on the SDMB if you want to know our opinion of him. He’s a very smart and very arrogant guy who grew up in a rather poor and miserable environment. He doesn’t listen to anyone else. He’s convinced that his philosophical theory is the greatest thing ever. There’s little evidence that he’s one of the 30 smartest. 3. Judit Polgár - She’s probably the best female chess player in history. She was intensely tutored by her father. Who knows if she’s one of the 30 smartest? 4. Marilyn vos Savant - As has been discussed before, her supposed I.Q. of 228 is only according to an old definition of I.Q. that has no relevance to the modern one. Who knows what her real I.Q. is? There’s little evidence that she’s one of the 30. 5. John H. Sununu - He got his bachelor’s at 22, his master’s at 24, and his Ph.D. at 27, so there’s nothing interesting about that. He taught at a university, served as a dean there, and then became a politician. Several other people have done the same, so there’s no evidence in that alone. 6. Neil deGrasse Tyson - He’s a very smart guy and a good TV host. There’s no particular evidence that he’s anything utterly brilliant. There’s no reason to think he’s one of the 30. 7. Kim Ung-Yong - As I pointed out above, no one can have an I.Q. of 210. He was a child prodigy, but he hasn’t done anything utterly great as an adult. There’s no evidence that he’s one of the 30. 8. Mislav Predavec - He’s a professor, an owner of a company, and the head of a high I.Q. society. There’s no evidence that he’s done anything that great. There’s no reason to think he’s one of the 30. 9. Manahel Thabet - She has an interesting biography. There’s no such thing as quantum mathematics. Who knows if she’s one of the 30? 10. Richard Rosner - I don’t know why he’s even mentioned. Where does this I.Q. of 190 come from? There’s no reason to have him in the 30. 11. Chris Hirata - Again, it’s impossible to have an I.Q. of 225. Who knows if he’s one of the 30. 12. Steven Pinker - He’s the only person on the list I’ve met, sort of, since I got his signature on some books at a signing he did. He’s done some important stuff. There’s no evidence that he’s one of the 30. 13. Ivan Ivec - He knows a lot about mathematics and I.Q. tests. That doesn’t tell us much. There’s little evidence that he’s in the 30. 14. Garry Kasparov - He was once the chess world champion. Why does the compiler of this list think that that makes someone one of the smartest people in the world? There’s little evidence that he’s of the 30. 15. Terence Tao - He was a child prodigy. He’s one of the best mathematicians in the world. Who knows if he’s one of the 30? 16. Scott Aaronson - He’s done some important work in theoretical computer science. Who knows if he’s one of the 30? 17. Nikola Poljak - It’s interesting that there are two Croatians on the list. He has done some good work in physics. There’s no reason to think that he’s one of the 30. 18. Alan Guth - He’s done very important work in cosmology. He’s one of the best physicists in the world. Who knows if he’s one of the 30? 19. Donald Knuth - He’s a very important computer scientist. His work is quite well known. Who knows if he’s one of the 30? 20. Noam Chomsky - He’s the best known person in linguistics in the world. He’s also an arrogant jerk who has screwed up the field with his poorly argued ideas. There’s no reason to think that he’s one of the 30. 21. Evangelos Katsioulis - He’s done many interesting things. It’s impossible to say that someone is the smartest person among 30 billion. There’s no reason to say that he’s one of the 30. 22. Magnus Carlsen - He’s the best chess player in the world. Why does the compiler of this list think that chess players are always among the smartest people in the world? There’s little reason to think that he’s among the 30. 23. Shahriar Afshar - He’s a very good physicist. He runs a company. There’s no reason to list him among the 30. 24. Akshay Venkatesh - He was a child prodigy. He’s a very good mathematician. There’s no reason to list him among the 30. 25. Saul Kripke - He was a child prodigy. He’s one of the most important philosophers. Who knows if he’s among the 30? 26. Ruth Lawrence - She was a child prodigy. She’s a very good mathematician. There’s little reason to list her in the 30. 27. Grigori Perelman - He’s one of the best mathematicians in the world. He’s also weird as all get out. Who knows if he’s among the 30? 28. Andrew Wiles - He’s one of the best mathematicians in the world. He proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. Who know if he’s among the 30? 29. Edward Witten - He may be the best physicist in the world. He actually kicked around a little before deciding to go into physics. Who knows if he’s in the 30? 30. Stephen Hawking - Oh, come on. Yeah, it’s neat that he’s managed to get cameos on various TV shows. It’s great that he overcame his disability. He’s not quite as great a physicist as is sometimes claimed. There’s little evidence that he’s among the 30. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/57 "2015-02-21T02:23:41Z")
Statistically speaking, the vast majority of humans never had the opportunities to ever do anything other than live and die behind a plow or a bayonet. The smartest person to ever live is almost certainly someone we have never heard of. The odds that the smartest person ever to live is also someone who had the means, wealth, and/or opportunity to become famous are very, very small. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/58 "2015-02-21T04:14:23Z")
To be fair, Kasparov isn’t just a great chess player. He also speaks an inordinately large number of languages, and I understand he’s had some success in politics, as well. And I’d be inclined to call Kip Thorne the smartest physicist alive, certainly smarter than Hawking, but he’s entirely absent from that list. Hawking is without a doubt quite smart, but I think his reputation for intelligence stems largely from the fact that he fits comfortably into a familiar archetype, the brilliant brain housed in a ruined body. People think he’s smart because he’s basically a real-world Charles Xavier. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/59 "2015-02-21T04:44:36Z")
A list of the top 30 is stupid for many reasons. Noise is a good one. There is no useful way you can measure something like that with enough precision or indeed that the measure even be definable with enough precision. I’m not even sure I would be comfortable with a top 10,000. Would be happy to see Terry Tao in any such list. Local kid done really good. Really nice guy. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405/60 "2015-02-21T21:26:42Z")
> [@Loch\_Raven](#): > > My vote is for Newton. Not that Einstein was a dope, but Newton brought into being the foundations everyone else built on. > > As a bonus, he wrote _Opticks_ in English, bringing the language into the scientific arena. Everyone stands on the shoulders of their predecessors. Newton refined & quantified (to several significant digits) the ideas that Galileo before him discovered. And if anyone deserves create for pulling us out of the Dark Ages and creating our modern concept of ‘the scientific method’ it’s him. But lists like these are of no value beyond a pop-culture sense. And if popularity mattered Newton would be hated today. He was an arrogant, unpleasant prick. And, by today’s standards, a believer in religious mysticism. Always liked this (rather fanciful) [scene in _Next Generation_…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg8_cKxJZJY) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-albert-einstein-really-the-smartest-human/712405.md?page=4)