Short answer: No IQ test exists for Alexander Hamilton, who died in 1804. The scholarly estimate comes from Catharine Cox's 1926 Stanford study of 301 eminent people. She filed his childhood among cases rated 130 to 140 and, after correcting for data reliability, put his young adulthood at 155. The figure is inferred from his documented record, not measured.
At a glance
| Estimated IQ | 155 (Cox, ages 17–26, corrected) |
|---|---|
| Basis of estimate | Cox (1926); childhood case filed under ratings of 130–140 |
| Measured score | None on record |
| Born – died | January 11, 1755 or 1757 (Nevis) – July 12, 1804 (New York City) |
| Field | Law, public finance, political theory |
| Signature achievement | Report on Public Credit (1790); 51 of the 85 Federalist essays |
| Comparable minds | Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin |
What Cox recorded
Hamilton's case appears in the chapter of Cox's 1926 book reserved for subjects rated 130 to 140 on evidence from birth to age 17. He shares that chapter with Isaac Newton and Napoleon Bonaparte. For ages 17 to 26, her corrected estimate is 155, according to the published reproduction of her Table 12A.
The rise between the two periods matches the record. Hamilton's surviving childhood documents are few; after he reached New York in his teens, the paper trail thickens fast. Cox's method scores what can be documented, so a late-blooming record lifts the second estimate more than the first.
Some websites list Hamilton at 170. We could not match that figure to any column of Cox's tables, and we do not use it. His full biography is at Alexander Hamilton; the method behind estimates like this one is explained in historical IQ estimates, explained.
The clerk who ran the firm
Hamilton was born on Nevis on January 11, in 1755 or 1757; the records conflict. As a teenager he clerked for Beekman and Cruger, an import-export house on St. Croix. In 1771 he ran the business for five months while its owner was at sea. He was still in his teens.
In 1772 a hurricane struck the island. Hamilton's account of it, published in the Royal Danish American Gazette, impressed local leaders enough that they paid to send him to North America for schooling. He entered King's College, now Columbia University, in 1773.
Speed: law in six months, a financial system from scratch
After four years as aide-de-camp to George Washington, Hamilton led the bayonet assault that took Redoubt No. 10 at Yorktown in 1781. He then studied law on his own for about six months and was admitted to the bar in July 1782.
In 1787 he sat as a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The Federalist essays followed in 1787 and 1788, written to win ratification in New York. Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85, more than James Madison and John Jay combined.
As the first Secretary of the Treasury, from September 11, 1789, to January 31, 1795, he produced three reports that set the architecture of American public finance: on public credit in January 1790, on a national bank in December 1790, and on manufactures in December 1791. The first Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791. The Revenue Cutter Service, forerunner of the Coast Guard, dates to August 4, 1790. Outside government he founded the Bank of New York in 1784 and the New York Evening Post in 1801.
Output at that pace, across law, finance and constitutional theory, is the evidence Cox's raters were weighing.
Hamilton against Jefferson, Franklin and Washington
| Name | Childhood (birth–17) | Ages 17–26, corrected |
|---|---|---|
| Thomas Jefferson | 145 | 160 |
| Benjamin Franklin | 140–150 band | 160 |
| Alexander Hamilton | 130–140 band | 155 |
| John Adams | 120 | 155 |
| George Washington | 125 | 140 |
On these numbers Hamilton trails Jefferson and Franklin by five points and matches John Adams. Those gaps sit well inside the error of any single estimate. The order says more about how much early evidence survived than about who thought faster.
One more caution applies to every number in the table. Cox calibrated her ratings against the 1916 Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon scale, an age-based instrument. Her 155 is therefore not a modern deviation score, and converting it into a precise rarity such as one in several thousand overstates what the method can deliver. For what 155 means on today's scales, see IQ 155.
What a number cannot settle
Hamilton's career ended at Weehawken, New Jersey. Aaron Burr mortally wounded him in a duel on July 11, 1804, and he died the next day. Estimated intelligence says nothing about temperament or judgment under pressure, and the episode is a reminder of the distance between the two.
Nor can an IQ figure decide the policy arguments between Hamilton and Jefferson over banks, debt and federal power. Those remain questions for historians and voters, not psychometrics. What the estimate captures is narrower: how early and how fast a mind produced work that others recorded.
How we assessed this
Hamilton's chapter placement comes from the table of contents of Cox's 1926 volume. The 155 figure comes from a reproduction of her Table 12A that we cross-checked against Dean Keith Simonton's 2006 paper, which prints Cox's figures for six presidents; all six matched. Biographical dates come from Wikipedia's sourced biography and Britannica.
Frequently asked questions
What was Alexander Hamilton's IQ?
There is no measured score. Catharine Cox's 1926 Stanford study placed Hamilton's childhood among cases rated 130 to 140 and gave a corrected estimate of 155 for ages 17 to 26. These are retrospective estimates from biographical evidence, made more than a century after his death.
Was Alexander Hamilton a genius?
His record supports the word. He managed a trading firm as a teenager, taught himself law in about six months, wrote 51 Federalist essays and, as first Treasury Secretary, designed the public credit and banking system of a new country. Cox's estimate of 155 places him among the most gifted founders.
Who had a higher IQ, Alexander Hamilton or Thomas Jefferson?
Cox rates Jefferson slightly higher: 145 in childhood against Hamilton's 130 to 140 band, and 160 against 155 for ages 17 to 26. The difference is within the method's error. Compare the full records in Thomas Jefferson's IQ.
How did Alexander Hamilton get an education?
Largely by his own effort. After his account of a 1772 hurricane on St. Croix was published, local patrons paid to send him to North America. He entered King's College, now Columbia, in 1773, and the Revolution soon drew him into the army. He later learned law on his own and passed the bar in 1782.
Why do some websites list Hamilton's IQ as 170?
We could not trace 170 to Cox's published tables. The corrected young-adult figure reproduced from her Table 12A is 155, and his childhood rating falls between 130 and 140. Treat 170 as an unsourced number until someone ties it to a column of the 1926 study.
Sources
- Cox, C. M. (1926). The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses (Internet Archive) — Hamilton's case in Chapter XVII, cases rated at AI IQ 130 to 140
- Cox's IQ Estimates of 301 Eminent Geniuses (IQ Comparison Site) — Reproduction of Cox's Table 12A corrected estimates: Hamilton 155
- Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership. Political Psychology 27(4) — Cox's figures for six presidents, used to cross-check the Table 12A reproduction
- Alexander Hamilton (Wikipedia) — Birth-year dispute, St. Croix clerkship, hurricane letter, bar admission, Treasury reports, duel
- Alexander Hamilton (Britannica) — Career outline, Bank of New York, New York Evening Post
- Simonton, D. K. (2020). Galton, Terman, Cox: The Distinctive Volume II in Genetic Studies of Genius — How Cox's raters produced and corrected their estimates
Editorial standard: IQ figures for historical figures are retrospective estimates and are labeled as such; scores for living people appear only when the person disclosed them or a reputable outlet reported them. Corrections: contact the editors.
