| Rank | Name | IQ | Born | Known For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 1st | Nikola Tesla 🇭🇷 | 195 | 1856 | Inventing the Tesla coil, alternating current machinery, and a transatlantic communications system.… |
| 2 2nd | Wilhelm Ostwald 🇱🇻 | 190 | 1853 | Catalysis, Coining the term 'Mole' and HSL and HSV |
| 3 3rd | Henri Poincaré 🇫🇷 | 190 | 1854 | Poincaré conjecture |
| 4 | Max Planck 🇩🇪 | 190 | 1858 | On the Second Principles of Mechanical Heat Theory (1879) |
| 5 | Sigmund Freud 🇦🇹 | 185 | 1856 | Psychoanalysis, including the theories of id, ego and super-ego, oedipus complex, repression, defens… |
| 6 | Oliver Heaviside | 180 | 1850 | Heaviside cover-up method <br> Heaviside step function <br> Heaviside condition <br> Heaviside-Feynm… |
| 7 | Hendrik Lorentz 🇳🇱 | 180 | 1853 | Zeeman effect |
| 8 | George Bernard Shaw 🇮🇪 | 180 | 1856 | Man and Superman (1902) Pygmalion (1912) The Doctor's Dilemma (1906) Saint Joan (1923) Caesar an… |
| 9 | Joseph John Thomson 🇬🇧 | 180 | 1856 | Discovery of the electron |
| 10 | Charles Scott Sherrington | 180 | 1857 | |
| 11 | Heinrich Hertz 🇩🇪 | 180 | 1857 | Proving the existence of the electromagnetic waves |
| 12 | Arthur Conan Doyle | 180 | 1859 | Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World |
| 13 | Heike Kamerlingh Onnes 🇳🇱 | 175 | 1853 | Liquid helium <br> Onnes-effect <br> Superconductivity <br> Virial equation of state |
| 14 | Émile Durkheim 🇫🇷 | 170 | 1858 | Being the architect of modern social science |
| 15 | Edmund Husserl 🇩🇪 | 170 | 1859 | "Phenomenology, epoché (also bracketing, transcendental reduction, or phenomenological reduction), e… |
Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the Crimean War exposed the limits of old empires, and the United States was heading toward a catastrophic reckoning over slavery. Science and politics were colliding in ways that would define the coming century. Florence Nightingale was founding modern nursing, Mendel was growing his peas, and the modern research university was emerging.
Nikola Tesla is ranked #1 among geniuses born in the 1850s with an estimated IQ of 195, known for Inventing the Tesla coil, alternating current machinery, and a transatlantic communications system. Is regarded as one o….
Our database includes 32 notable geniuses born between 1850–1859, spanning fields from science and mathematics to philosophy, literature, and the arts.
The average estimated IQ of documented geniuses born in the 1850s is 174, with the highest recorded being 195.
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