IQ Guides: the Record Behind the Numbers

IQ scores explained, one number at a time

What each score means, how rare it is, and how it reads on every scale.

IQ 95 IQ 98 IQ 99 IQ 100 IQ 105 IQ 110 IQ 113 IQ 115 IQ 117 IQ 120 IQ 121 IQ 122 IQ 123 IQ 125 IQ 126 IQ 127 IQ 128 IQ 129 IQ 130 IQ 131 IQ 132 IQ 133 IQ 134 IQ 135 IQ 136 IQ 137 IQ 138 IQ 139 IQ 140 IQ 141 IQ 145 IQ 146 IQ 147 IQ 148 IQ 149 IQ 150 IQ 151 IQ 154 IQ 155 IQ 156 IQ 160 IQ 161 IQ 162 IQ 165 IQ 166 IQ 168 IQ 170 IQ 173 IQ 174 IQ 175 IQ 177 IQ 178 IQ 180 IQ 182 IQ 183 IQ 185 IQ 186 IQ 187 IQ 190 IQ 192 IQ 194 IQ 195 IQ 197 IQ 198 IQ 200 IQ 210 IQ 220 IQ 225 IQ 228 IQ 250 IQ 800

Mathematicians

• Ramanujan's IQ: Hardy's 100 Rating and the 185 MythHe never sat an intelligence test. He left nearly 3,900 results, a perfect mark on G. H. Hardy's private talen
• Leonhard Euler's IQ: 866 Works, No Test, No EstimateThe most prolific mathematician in history has no IQ score and no scholarly estimate. He has something better:
• Gauss's IQ: The 250–300 Myth and What the Record ShowsThe internet credits Gauss with the highest IQ in history. No test, no study and no psychologist stands behind
• Archimedes' IQ: What 2,200-Year-Old Proofs RevealNo test, no childhood record, no Cox estimate. What survives is a set of proofs so far ahead of their time tha
• Pythagoras' IQ: Why the Evidence Is Thinner Than the LegendThe most famous name in school geometry belongs to one of the least documented minds in history. That is exact
• Kurt Gödel's IQ: No Score, Two Theorems That Changed LogicHe lived through the rise of IQ testing and left no score behind. At 25 he produced something harder to measur
• John von Neumann's IQ: The Legend and the RecordHans Bethe wondered whether his brain signaled a superior species. No psychologist ever measured it. This is w
• John Nash's IQ: The Genius Letter and the RecordHis professor's recommendation to Princeton ran a single sentence of substance. Seventy years of mathematics a
• Jim Simons' IQ: Geometer, Codebreaker, QuantHe reached the top of geometry, then of finance. The only numbers he left behind are theorems and returns.
• Alan Turing's IQ: What His Record Shows InsteadHe devised the best-known test of machine intelligence. No record shows he ever sat an intelligence test himse

Physicists and scientists

• Galileo's IQ: Cox's 185 Estimate and the EvidenceThe founder of experimental physics is one of the few scientists with a scholarly IQ estimate. The number is r
• Werner Heisenberg's IQ: Quantum Mechanics at 23No psychologist tested him and no historian has published an estimate. The documentary record is sharper than
• Niels Bohr's IQ: The Atom Rebuilt at 27, No Test ScoreBohr has no test result and no published estimate. He has something rarer: a model of the atom built at 27 and
• Paul Dirac's IQ: No Score, but Antimatter on PaperDirac spoke little and wrote less, but what he wrote predicted a form of matter nobody had seen. No IQ test wa
• Max Planck's IQ: The Physicist Told to Quit PhysicsA professor told the young Planck that physics was nearly finished. Twenty-two years later Planck broke it ope
• Oppenheimer's IQ: Harvard in 3 Years, No Test ScoreThe internet gives Oppenheimer an IQ anywhere from 135 to 190. None of those numbers traces to a test. His rec
• Carl Sagan's IQ: What Is Known and What Is NotHe won a Pulitzer Prize for a book on the evolution of human intelligence. His own was never measured in publi
• Thomas Edison's IQ: No Score, but 1,093 PatentsA teacher reportedly called him addled. He left school after three months and went on to 1,093 U.S. patents. T

Philosophers and thinkers

• Socrates' IQ: The Evidence Behind the LegendHe wrote nothing, took no test, and was born nearly two thousand years before the only scholarly study of hist
• Aristotle's IQ: The Honest Answer and the EvidenceAristotle built the first formal logic and the first systematic biology. No psychologist has ever put a defens
• Thomas Aquinas's IQ: Eight Million Words of EvidenceFellow students called him the dumb ox. His surviving writings are eight times the length of Aristotle's. No p
• Immanuel Kant's IQ: Cox's 1926 Estimates ExplainedKant is one of the few philosophers with a documented historical IQ estimate. The figures are lower, and more
• Nietzsche's IQ: Why He Has No Scholarly EstimateHe held a university chair at 24, before finishing his doctorate. He was born inside the window of the one stu
• Karl Marx's IQ: The Evidence, Without the PoliticsMarx fits the birth window of the best-known historical IQ study but was never rated. His record is a doctorat
• Sigmund Freud's IQ: What Is Known and What Isn'tFreud was 49 when the first intelligence test appeared. His case rests on documents: school honors, a laborato
• Carl Jung's IQ: No Score, a Measurable LegacyJung never sat an IQ test on record, but he ran timed experiments on thought and coined terms that personality

Leaders and statesmen

• Suleiman the Magnificent's Estimated IQ: The EvidenceNo researcher has ever put a number on the Ottoman Empire's longest-reigning sultan. The record he left in law
• Napoleon's IQ: What Cox's 1926 Estimate ShowsA Stanford psychologist rated him from school reports and letters in 1926. Her numbers are high but not extrao
• Alexander the Great's IQ: What the Evidence SupportsHe died more than 2,200 years before the first IQ test and falls outside every systematic study of historical
• Hannibal's IQ: What Cannae Reveals About His MindRome's most dangerous enemy left no test score and almost no words of his own. He left something harder to fak
• Julius Caesar's IQ: Commander, Author, Calendar MakerHe conquered Gaul, wrote the account himself in prose still taught to Latin students, and fixed the calendar t
• George Washington's IQ: The Cox and Simonton EstimatesThe first president has one of the few historical IQ estimates grounded in research. It is lower than most adm
• Thomas Jefferson's IQ: The Cox and Simonton EstimatesJefferson is one of the few presidents rated by two separate scholarly projects. Both place him at or near the
• Benjamin Franklin's IQ: Cox's 160 and the EvidenceTwo years of school, a printing apprenticeship at 12, the Copley Medal at 47. Franklin's estimated IQ rests on
• Alexander Hamilton's IQ: The Cox Estimate and the RecordAn orphaned clerk from St. Croix wrote 51 of the 85 Federalist essays and designed the nation's public finance
• Abraham Lincoln's IQ: The Estimates Behind the LegendLincoln's formal schooling added up to less than a year. The scholarly estimates of his intelligence start mod
• Winston Churchill's IQ: What the Record Actually ShowsChurchill failed the Sandhurst entrance exam twice and won the Nobel Prize in Literature at 78. Neither fact i

Artists, composers and writers

• Mozart's IQ: Cox's 150–155 Estimate, ExplainedThree Stanford psychologists read the same childhood record and landed 65 points apart. The story of Mozart's
• Beethoven's IQ: The 135–140 Estimate and the EvidenceHe could add but never learned to multiply, and he wrote the Ninth Symphony without hearing it. Beethoven brea
• Bach's IQ: The Cox Estimate and What It MissedCox's raters could not agree how much a fugue should count toward intelligence. They settled on 125, the lowes
• Michelangelo's IQ: The 145–160 Estimate and the 200 ClaimThree raters scored the teenage Michelangelo at 130, 160 and 140. The psychologist who compiled their work lat
• Stanley Kubrick's IQ: The 200 Claim vs. the RecordThe internet says 200. His high school record says poor grades and a truant who skipped class for the movies.
• Charlie Chaplin's IQ: What the Record Actually ShowsHe passed through a workhouse and a paupers' school and had abandoned education by 13. By 26 he was one of the
• Dostoevsky's IQ: Why No Credible Estimate ExistsHe finished a novel in 26 days of dictation and wrote The Brothers Karamazov in his last years. No test captur
• Isaac Asimov's IQ: The Army Test He Wrote AboutAsimov is one of the few famous minds who wrote down his own score. He also wrote the sharpest caveat about it
• Christopher Hitchens's IQ: What the Record ShowsNo test score survives, and none is needed to take the measure of a writer who argued for a living. The eviden
• Stephen Fry's IQ: No Published Score, a Long RecordBritain's most familiar on-screen polymath has never released a test result. His record across novels, comedy,

Technology and business

• Elon Musk's IQ: What Is Actually KnownThe internet says 155. No test backs it. The documented record, from a reported SAT to reusable rockets, tells
• Bill Gates's IQ: What His 1590 SAT Actually ShowsA near-perfect SAT, a B+ in Harvard's hardest math course and a peer-reviewed paper at 23. None of it is an IQ
• Steve Jobs's IQ: The Fourth-Grade Test and the EstimatesOne childhood test, one psychologist's arithmetic and one biographer's verdict. Here is how far each piece of
• Peter Thiel's IQ: Chess, Math Contests and the RecordNo test score is public. What is public is an unusually well-documented youth: a chess ranking, a first-place
• Ilya Sutskever's IQ: What His Research Record ShowsNo test score exists in public. What exists is one of the most consequential research records in modern comput
• Vitalik Buterin's IQ: The 257 Myth and the Real RecordThe internet credits him with a 257. That number cannot exist on any modern scale. His real record needs no in

Chess, sport and prodigies

• Garry Kasparov's IQ: The 1987 Der Spiegel Test ResultsKasparov is one of the very few world chess champions ever put through a formal intelligence battery. The scor
• Magnus Carlsen's IQ: No Published Score, a 2882 PeakThe highest-rated player in chess history has never released an IQ score. His results over the board are the o
• Bobby Fischer's IQ: Tracing the 180–187 ClaimThe famous number leads back to a single unnamed source quoted in a 1973 biography. Fischer's chess, not a tes
• Muhammad Ali's IQ: The 1964 Army Test in ContextOne written screening, taken by a 22-year-old fighter who struggled to read, became the most quoted fact about
• Kim Peek's IQ: The 87 Score and the Memory Behind ItThe man behind Rain Man tested below average overall. His subtests ran from superior to impaired, and his memo
• Michael Kearney's IQ: The 200 Claim and the Real RecordThe world's youngest university graduate has a documented record few people match. The famous IQ figure has a
• Nolan Gould's IQ: The Reported 150 and the Mensa ClaimHe played the family's most scatterbrained son for 11 seasons. Off camera, he said he had been a Mensa member

Rankings and explainers

• Mathematicians' IQ Ranked: Who Has a Real EstimateMost famous numbers for famous mathematicians are invented. Here is the ranking that survives a source check,
• Physicists' IQ Ranked: Estimates vs. the EvidenceOf history's most famous physicists, two have scholarly IQ estimates and one has a reported test score. Every
• Philosophers' IQ Ranked: What the Estimates ShowMost philosopher IQ lists are invented. One 1926 study produced real, if rough, estimates, and it leaves every
• Composers' IQ Ranked: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and MoreEvery scholarly IQ figure for a great composer traces to one 1926 study. Here is the full ranking, the raters'
• Generals' IQ Ranked: Napoleon, Alexander, HannibalGreat commanders are fixtures of popular lists of history's smartest people. Only a few have a research-based
• How Do We Know Einstein's IQ? Historical Estimates ExplainedEvery famous historical IQ traces to a method, a rater or nobody at all. This is how to tell which.
• Top 1 Percent IQ: Why the Line Sits at About 135The line is not a matter of opinion. It falls out of the bell curve at 134.9, and it moves only when the scale
• What Is Considered a High IQ? 120, 130 and 140 ExplainedAverage is 100. High begins where the test manuals stop saying average, and every ten points after that thins
• IQ Scale and Classification Chart: Every Range ExplainedEvery major test agrees on the numbers. They disagree on the words, and the words have changed far more than t
• IQ Rarity Chart: How Rare Is Your Score, from 100 to 200Every IQ score is a statement about odds. This chart gives the odds for every step from 100 to 200, and marks
• How to Join Mensa: Requirements, Tests and Qualifying ScoresMensa has one admission rule and two ways to meet it. The details, from qualifying scores to fees, vary by cou
• Are Online IQ Tests Accurate? What a Free Test Can Tell YouA free test can point in the right direction. It cannot hand over a clinical number, and the reasons are speci
• How Many People Have a Genius IQ? The Worldwide CountThe bell curve gives a precise answer for every IQ cutoff. History, counting people by what they achieved, giv
• Was Einstein Left-Handed? No. Here Is the EvidenceEinstein appears on almost every list of famous left-handers. The photographs, the violin and the archivists w
• Smartest Animals in the World: Ranked by the EvidenceMirror tests, hook-making crows, a dog that knew 1,022 names. Ten species, the experiments that showed what th