The Greatest Physicists of All Time — Ranked

Physics is the deepest science: it asks how reality works at the most fundamental level. The minds on this list answered questions that had puzzled humanity for millennia.

Newton gave us classical mechanics. Einstein gave us relativity. Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac gave us quantum mechanics. Each shifted the foundations under our feet.

William James Sidis

b. 1898 • d. 1944 • US

IQ 250

The Animate And The Inanimate

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Chris Hirata

b. 1982 • US

IQ 225

Being the youngest U.S. citizen to receive an International Physics Olympiad gold medal. Starting working for NASA at the age of 16.

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Terence Chi-Shen Tao

b. 1975 • AU

IQ 220

When he was two years old, he was able to perform simple arithmetic. By the time he was nine, he was studying college-level math courses. An

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Kim Ung-yong

b. 1962 • KR

IQ 210

Having one of the biggest IQs in the world.

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Aristotle

b. 0384 • GR

IQ 200

A genius whose philosophical ideas are still taught, but his contributions to physics retarded progress for almost two millennia.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

b. 1749 • d. 1832 • DE

IQ 200

Faust

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Evangelos Katsioulis

b. 1976 • GR

IQ 198

<br> Highest adult IQ in the world (2012): IQ 198, sd 15 or IQ 205, sd 16 <br>

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Empedocles

b. 0490 • GR

IQ 195

An ancient theory of natural selection; mass conservation; and the four elements which are now often misattributed to Aristotle.

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Gilbert N. Lewis

b. 1875 • d. 1946 • US

IQ 195

Covalent bondLewis dot structuresValence bond theoryElectronic theory of acids and basesChemical thermodynamicsFugacityHeavy waterNamed phot

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Henry Adams

b. 1838 • d. 1918 • US

IQ 195

The Education of Henry Adams, The History of the United States of America 1801–1817

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Hermann von Helmholtz

b. 1821 • d. 1894 • DE

IQ 195

His mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone

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Ludwig Boltzmann

b. 1844 • d. 1906 • AT

IQ 195

The development of statistical mechanics

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Nikola Tesla

b. 1856 • d. 1943 • HR

IQ 195

Inventing the Tesla coil, alternating current machinery, and a transatlantic communications system. Is regarded as one of the most important

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Pierre-Simon Laplace

b. 1749 • d. 1827 • FR

IQ 195

Predicting the existence of black holes

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Richard G. Rosner

b. 1960 • US

IQ 192

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Archimedes

b. 0287 • GR

IQ 190

Archimedes' principleArchimedes' screwhydrostaticsleversinfinitesimalsNeuseis constructions

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Athanasius Kircher

b. 1602 • d. 1680 • DE

IQ 190

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Baron d'Holbach

b. 1723 • d. 1789 • DE

IQ 190

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Carl Friedrich Gauss

b. 1777 • d. 1855 • DE

IQ 190

Gaussian elimination, also known as "row reduction" or "Gaussian method" • Gauss–Jordan elimination • Gauss–Seidel method • Gauss's cyclotom

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Christiaan Huygens

b. 1629 • d. 1695 • NL

IQ 190

Explanation of Saturn's rings • Centrifugal force • Collision formulae • Gambler's ruin • Pendulum clock • Huygens–Fresnel principle • Wave

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Enrico Fermi

b. 1901 • d. 1954 • IT

IQ 190

Demonstrating first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction Fermi–Dirac statistics Fermi's golden rule Fermi paradox Fermi method Fermi theo

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Erwin Schrödinger

b. 1887 • d. 1961 • AT

IQ 190

Schrödinger's cat

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Voltaire

b. 1694 • d. 1778 • FR

IQ 190

The novel Candide

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Friedrich Nietzsche

b. 1844 • d. 1900 • DE

IQ 190

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good & Evil

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Giordano Bruno

b. 1548 • d. 1600 • IT

IQ 190

His cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model

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Isaac Newton

b. 1643 • d. 1727 • ENG

IQ 190

Newtonian mechanics • Universal gravitation • Calculus • Newton's laws of motion • Optics • Binomial series • Principia • Newton's method

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John von Neumann

b. 1903 • d. 1957 • HU

IQ 190

Abelian von Neumann algebra Affiliated operator Amenable group Arithmetic logic unit Artificial viscosity Axiom of regularity Axiom of limit

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Joseph-Louis Lagrange

b. 1736 • d. 1813 • IT

IQ 190

Analytical mechanics, celestial mechanics, mathematical analysis, number theory, theory of equations

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Henri Poincaré

b. 1854 • d. 1912 • FR

IQ 190

Poincaré conjecture

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Leonhard Euler

b. 1707 • d. 1783 • CH

IQ 190

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Linus Pauling

b. 1901 • d. 1994 • US

IQ 190

Alpha sheet • Ancestral sequence reconstruction • Backbonding • Beta sheet • Bond order

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Max Planck

b. 1858 • d. 1947 • DE

IQ 190

On the Second Principles of Mechanical Heat Theory (1879)

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Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

b. 1796 • d. 1832 • FR

IQ 190

Carnot cycle • Carnot efficiency • Carnot theorem • Carnot heat engine

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Paul Dirac

b. 1902 • d. 1984 • ENG

IQ 190

Sharing the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory"

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Pierre Gassendi

b. 1592 • d. 1655 • FR

IQ 190

Calor vitalis (vital heat)

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Wilhelm Ostwald

b. 1853 • d. 1932 • LV

IQ 190

Catalysis, Coining the term 'Mole' and HSL and HSV

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Marilyn vos Savant

b. 1946 • US

IQ 186

Penning the 'Ask Marilyn' column in Parade magazine and solving the 'Monty Hall Problem' in the process.

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Alan Turing

b. 1912 • d. 1954 • ENG

IQ 185

Cryptanalysis of the Enigma • Turing's proof • Turing machine • Turing test • Unorganised machine • Turing pattern • Turing reduction • The

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Alfred J. Lotka

b. 1880 • d. 1949 • US

IQ 185

The Lotka–Volterra equations

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Arthur Schopenhauer

b. 1788 • d. 1860 • DE

IQ 185

The World as Will and Representation (1818)

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Auguste Comte

b. 1798 • d. 1857 • FR

IQ 185

Formulating the doctrine of positivism.

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Blaise Pascal

b. 1623 • d. 1662 • FR

IQ 185

Pascal's law

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Ctesibius

b. 0285 • d. 0222 • EG

IQ 185

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Democritus

b. 0460 • GR

IQ 185

Atomism and Aetiology

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Epicurus

b. 0341 • d. 0270 • GR

IQ 185

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Heraclitus

b. 0535 • d. 0475 • GR

IQ 185

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Hero of Alexandria

b. 0010 • d. 0070 • GR

IQ 185

Aeolipile • Heron's fountain • Heron's formula • Vending machine

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Humphry Davy

b. 1778 • d. 1829 • GB

IQ 185

Electrolysis, aluminium, sodium, potassium, calcium, strontium, magnesium, barium, boron, Davy lamp

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Immanuel Kant

b. 1724 • d. 1804 • DE

IQ 185

Critique of Pure Reason

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James Clerk Maxwell

b. 1831 • d. 1879 • SCT

IQ 185

Statistical mechanics • Maxwell's equations • Displacement current • Maxwell relations

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Jean le Rond d'Alembert

b. 1717 • d. 1783 • FR

IQ 185

D'Alembert criterion • D'Alembert force • D'Alembert's form of the principle of virtual work

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Leon Winiarski

b. 1865 • d. 1915 • PL

IQ 185

Essay on Social Mechanics

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Otto von Guericke

b. 1602 • d. 1686 • DE

IQ 185

vacuum, atmospheric pressure, Electrostatics

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Percy Williams Bridgman

b. 1882 • d. 1961 • US

IQ 185

High-pressure physics • Operationalism • Operational definition

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Pierre Louis Maupertuis

b. 1698 • d. 1759 • FR

IQ 185

Principle of least action, precursor of transmutation

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Robert Boyle

b. 1627 • d. 1691 • IE

IQ 185

Boyle's law and Corpuscularianism

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Roger Joseph Boscovich

b. 1711 • d. 1787 • HR

IQ 185

Precursor of the atomic theoryFounder of Brera Observatory

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Satyendra Nath Bose

b. 1894 • d. 1974 • IN

IQ 185

Bose–Einstein condensateBose–Einstein statisticsBose–Einstein distributionBose–Einstein correlationsBose gasBosonIdeal Bose Equation of Stat

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Sigmund Freud

b. 1856 • d. 1939 • AT

IQ 185

Psychoanalysis, including the theories of id, ego and super-ego, oedipus complex, repression, defense mechanism

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Thomas Edison

b. 1847 • d. 1931 • US

IQ 185

The phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the greatest physicist of all time?

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are most commonly named the two greatest physicists in history. Newton created classical mechanics; Einstein replaced it with relativity at extreme scales.

Who has the highest IQ among physicists?

Several physicists have IQ estimates above 190, including Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking. Modern testing was not used; estimates come from biographers and historians.

How many Nobel Prizes have physicists won?

Over 220 Nobel Prizes in Physics have been awarded since 1901. Multiple physicists in this list are laureates.