The Greatest Mathematicians of All Time — IQ Ranked

Gauss, Euler, Newton, Tao — the highest-IQ mathematicians from antiquity to today.

1. Pierre-Simon Laplace

   1749–1827 · France
   195
2. Archimedes

   Antiquity · Greece
   190
3. Carl Friedrich Gauss

   1777–1855 · Germany
   190
4. Christiaan Huygens

   1629–1695 · Netherlands
   190
5. Isaac Newton

   1643–1727 · England
   190
6. John von Neumann

   1903–1957 · Hungary
   190
7. Joseph-Louis Lagrange

   1736–1813 · Italy
   190
8. Henri Poincaré

   1854–1912 · France
   190
9. Leonhard Euler

   1707–1783 · Switzerland
   190
10. Alan Turing

    1912–1954 · England
    185
11. Blaise Pascal

    1623–1662 · France
    185
12. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

    1646–1716 · Germany
    182
13. Bernhard Riemann

    1826–1866 · Germany
    180
14. Bertrand Russell

    1872–1970 · United Kingdom
    180
15. Joseph Fourier

    1768–1830 · France
    180
16. Johannes Kepler

    1571–1630 · Germany
    180
17. Pythagoras

    570–? · Greece
    180
18. René Descartes

    1596–1650 · France
    178
19. George Boole

    1815–1864 · England
    175
20. Pierre de Fermat

    1607–? · France
    175
21. Srinivasa Ramanujan

    1887–1920 · India
    175
22. Charles Babbage

    1791–1871 · United Kingdom
    170
23. Hypatia

    350–415 · EG
    170
24. Kurt Gödel

    1906–1978 · Czech Republic
    170
25. Norbert Wiener

    1894–1964 · United States
    170
26. Évariste Galois

    1811–1832 · France
    165
27. Ada Lovelace

    1815–1852 · United Kingdom
    160
28. Augustin-Louis Cauchy

    1789–1857 · France
    160
29. Omar Khayyam

    1048–1131 · IR
    160

How we ranked this list

Scores draw from cited estimates in published biographies and psychometric literature. Historical IQ figures are reconstructions, not test results.