| Rank | Name | IQ | Born | Known For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 1st | Chris Hirata 🇺🇸 | 225 | 1982 | Being the youngest U.S. citizen to receive an International Physics Olympiad gold medal. Starting wo… |
| 2 2nd | Michael Kearney 🇺🇸 | 200 | 1984 | Child prodigy, youngest person to ever graduate from college (age 10) |
| 3 3rd | Nikola Poljak | 183 | 1982 | |
| 4 | Manahel Thabet 🇾🇪 | 168 | 1981 | the youngest person to receive a financial engineering Ph.D. magna cum laude. In 2012 she came up wi… |
| 5 | Shawn Fanning 🇺🇸 | — | 1980 | Co-founder and lead software engineer of Napster |
| 6 | Akshay Venkatesh 🇮🇳 | — | 1981 | Mathematical Work, Former Child Prodigy |
| 7 | Scott Aaronson 🇺🇸 | — | 1981 | Quantum Turing machine with postselection <br> Algebrization <br> Boson sampling |
| 8 | Lang Lang 🇨🇳 | — | 1982 | Entering the Beijing Conservatory at age eight |
| 9 | Étienne Bacrot 🇫🇷 | — | 1983 | Becoming a Grandmaster in March 1997 at the age of 14 years and 2 months |
| 10 | Ruslan Ponomariov 🇺🇦 | — | 1983 | Being the FIDE World Chess Champion from 2002 to 2004 |
| 11 | Mark Zuckerberg 🇺🇸 | — | 1984 | Co-founding and leading Facebook, Inc. |
| 12 | Bu Xiangzhi 🇨🇳 | — | 1985 | Becoming a chess grandmaster in 1999 |
| 13 | Sam Altman 🇺🇸 | — | 1985 | am Altman is best known for his work in the field of artificial intelligence.<br> He is the Presi… |
| 14 | Koneru Humpy 🇮🇳 | — | 1987 | |
| 15 | Teimour Radjabov 🇦🇿 | — | 1987 | Starting playing chess at the age of 3 |
The Reagan-Thatcher era brought free-market triumphalism, the AIDS crisis, and the dawn of personal computing into awkward coexistence. Apple, Microsoft, and IBM were fighting the first battles of the PC wars, the internet was still a government research network, and globalization was accelerating manufacturing out of the West. The Cold War was moving toward its unexpected conclusion as Gorbachev introduced glasnost.
Chris Hirata is ranked #1 among geniuses born in the 1980s with an estimated IQ of 225, known for Being the youngest U.S. citizen to receive an International Physics Olympiad gold medal. Starting working for NASA at th….
Our database includes 16 notable geniuses born between 1980–1989, spanning fields from science and mathematics to philosophy, literature, and the arts.
The average estimated IQ of documented geniuses born in the 1980s is 194, with the highest recorded being 225.
Discover brilliant minds born on the same day as you — explore birthdays, IQ scores, and life stories.
Find Your Birthday Genius →