I know we all usually think of Einstein as an off-the-charts genius, but I’ve heard that he had a low IQ and could almost have been qualified as an idiot savant (allegedly, he had to run a clothesline from his house to the place where he worked because he’d get lost.) Not knowing that much about Einstein, I’m putting it to you people.
I seem to recall that this question was not definitively answered the last time it was asked. However, I recommend you do a search for the other threads that have come up on this subject over the years.
This page’s author says he saw somewhere that Albert may have had an IQ of “only” 160 or so. Not a good source.
However, that wouldn’t be terribly unusual. James Gleick notes in passing in his biography Genius, that Richard Feynmann scored a merely exceptional 126.
I asked the same question a while back. What was Einstein’s I.Q.?
IT is very possible that the specific measure that you are looking for did not have a whole lot to do with Einstein’s successes. With an IQ of 160 he could have easily mastered the math he required. But remember that what he really did was to see deeper Ideas in the substance of nature. His mental experiments were really more about creativity than “IQ”.
Some idiots come up with some great ideas. Sometimes knowledge and IQ are a detriment.
Mr. Einstein’s IQ was a lot lower then his fans want. He was ok in college and only studied what he wanted too. A terrible student otherwise. He was a great scientist and thinker, but he was a cretin in other areas of living. His family suffered greatly and he lacked in social and husbandly and fatherly skills. He liked sex though, and he hooked up with this woman and dumped his family for a trollup.
There are lots of people with high IQ’s who are the worst serial killers, and abusers in the history of mankind.
Yeah, I posted this in preparation for a GD thread on IQ testing. Maybe I should just go start that up.
This is a prime example of the limits of standard measurements of subjective phenonema. Einstein’s ideas have revolutionized civilization because they were so non-obvious and with such far reaching effects.
This post belongs in the Scatological Review. Care to provide the necessary citations?
It’s extremely unlikely that Einstein ever took an I.Q. test. By the time I.Q. tests were invented, he already had his Ph.D. I.Q. tests are mostly given to students and to people entering certain orgainzations. (They were given to Army recruits in World War I, for instance.) I can’t think of any point in Einstein’s life when he would have been likely to take an I.Q. test.
Any estimate of his I.Q. should be taken with a boulder of salt. Anyone who claims to be able to estimate I.Q. from a person’s later accomplishments is a charlatan. There is only a fairly weak correlation between a person’s tested I.Q. and his later accomplishments.
What Wendell said :). Adult IQ tests have fairly low ceilings so even if Einstein had done an IQ test, it would have been as an adult and it wouldn’t have been able to give him a score over about 140. There’s a fairly thorough biography of Einstein which didn’t give details of IQ.
I read somewhere that Feynman tested at 140 ::shrug::
And ultimately once you’re an adult WTF does it matter?
See the following thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=90737
We’re going to be creating an FAQ on I.Q.
I totally agree with Wendell and Primaflora. There is no way of estimating a persons’ IQ from accomplishments in life.
Wiwaxia, et al.: When whoever it is DOES try to estimate the IQ of long dead or famous people, are they using anything at all that is even quasi-objective? I always suspected they were pulling out of their butts, but it seems a little nervy.
Has anyone ever tried to correlate IQ test scores with other supposed tests of how well one thinks, like say SATs?
JCHeckler
I’ve never seen anything objective which justifies those silly lists. I really don’t think it is even remotely possible to retrospectively quantify a dead person’s IQ and certainly there doesn’t seem to be a solid body of reputable research on it. It’s like that silly chart which purports to correlate career with IQ. IIRC writer = an IQ of about 160. Nope, no way. Some writers will have that IQ but most of us don’t. I don’t, my partner doesn’t.
SAT’s relating to IQ tests is a perennial favourite too. No there is no strong correlation of SATS and IQ scores. While a lot of kids with high IQs do score well on the SATS, you cannot use the SATS to determine IQ. Don’t SATS measure acquired knowledge?
Well, he certainly never took a test as a child. On the other hand, once it became evident just how much of a lars he was, there were plenty of tests, of various sorts, to try to figure out why. I know I’ve seen pictures of a mature (grey-haired) Einstein lying on a table with a bunch of electrodes hooked to his scalp-- I can’t imagine that the researchers would have neglected all the then-standard psychological tests (including IQ).
Einstein as an adult would have hit the ceilings pretty fast on the available IQ tests. Well, presuming he would test over 140-160 that is ;).
There is not and never has been a reliable IQ test for adults which goes high enough to score in the profoundly gifted range. Rumour has it that the Stanford Binet which is due to be released in the next couple of years will measure up to 300 in children so it would presumably have a high ceiling for adults as well. I’d love to know more about how the hell you norm an IQ test to 300 when the highest measured score is 295 on an outdated test.
<< in best Homer Simpson voice : >> Mmmmmm, a dead person’s IQ…
I thought I read somewhere that Einstein had dyslexia.
Einstein was thought to be dyslexic, but back then they didn’t have a name for the handicapped, I also read he failed math one year in high school, (I think it was only one year… not sure what math course it was). I myself am dyslexic, and I know what it’s like to have “disabilities” that MIGHT mask ones “abilities”. I’m not well spoken, but I know I’m smart. I think Einstein had this problem, I think seemingly simple things were difficult for him to grasp. Anyway… I read that he could “see” problems and ideas in his head. He was a person that I think relied on his ability to make “visuals” in his noggin. Children also made fun of him when he was a kid, they thought he was a moron. Best type of revenge is success.
ps…
sorry for the crude posts…
I have a hard time writing especially. Reading, (as long as it’s silent, doesn’t pose a problem).