| Rank | Name | IQ | Born | Known For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 1st | Leon Winiarski 🇵🇱 | 185 | 1865 | Essay on Social Mechanics |
| 2 2nd | Marie Curie 🇵🇱 | 180 | 1867 | Radioactivity Polonium Radium |
| 3 3rd | Walther Nernst 🇩🇪 | 175 | 1864 | Third Law of Thermodynamics |
| 4 | Arnold Sommerfeld 🇩🇪 | 175 | 1868 | Being nominated for the Nobel Prize 84 times but never wining it. |
| 5 | Robert Andrews Millikan 🇺🇸 | 175 | 1868 | Oil drop experiment measuring the charge of the electron <br> Photoelectric effect <br> Cosmic ray p… |
| 6 | Herman Hollerith 🇺🇸 | 170 | 1860 | Electromechanical tabulation of punched card data |
| 7 | Max Weber 🇩🇪 | 170 | 1864 | The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) |
| 8 | William Butler Yeats 🇮🇪 | 170 | 1865 | Leda and the Swan |
| 9 | Henry Ford 🇺🇸 | 165 | 1863 | Founding and leading the Ford Motor Company |
| 10 | Wright brothers 🇺🇸 | 165 | 1867 | Inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane, the Wright Fly… |
| 11 | Mahatma Gandhi 🇮🇳 | 160 | 1869 | Indian Independence Movement and Nonviolent resistance |
| 12 | Frederick Matthias Alexander 🇦🇺 | 150 | 1869 | Alexander technique |
| 13 | Anton Chekhov 🇷🇺 | — | 1860 | Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya. |
| 14 | George Washington Carver 🇬🇧 | — | 1860 | Improved the agricultural economy of the United States by promoting nitrogen-providing peanuts as an… |
| 15 | Nettie Stevens 🇺🇸 | — | 1861 | XY sex-determination system |
The American Civil War, the unification of Italy and Germany, and the publication of Marx's Capital made this decade a hinge point of modern history. Lincoln transformed what democratic governance could mean, while Mendel and Darwin were quietly rewriting biology. The Atlantic telegraph cable finally connected two continents, and the modern nation-state was consolidating across the Western world.
Leon Winiarski is ranked #1 among geniuses born in the 1860s with an estimated IQ of 185, known for Essay on Social Mechanics.
Our database includes 23 notable geniuses born between 1860–1869, spanning fields from science and mathematics to philosophy, literature, and the arts.
The average estimated IQ of documented geniuses born in the 1860s is 170, with the highest recorded being 185.
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