The Greatest Physicists of All Time — Ranked by IQ

Einstein, Newton, Hawking, Feynman, Bohr — physics ranked by raw intellectual horsepower.

1. Hermann von Helmholtz

   1821–1894 · Germany
   195
2. Ludwig Boltzmann

   1844–1906 · Austria
   195
3. Nikola Tesla

   1856–1943 · HR
   195
4. Pierre-Simon Laplace

   1749–1827 · France
   195
5. Archimedes

   Antiquity · Greece
   190
6. Christiaan Huygens

   1629–1695 · Netherlands
   190
7. Enrico Fermi

   1901–1954 · Italy
   190
8. Erwin Schrödinger

   1887–1961 · Austria
   190
9. Isaac Newton

   1643–1727 · England
   190
10. Henri Poincaré

    1854–1912 · France
    190
11. Max Planck

    1858–1947 · Germany
    190
12. Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

    1796–1832 · France
    190
13. Paul Dirac

    1902–1984 · England
    190
14. Blaise Pascal

    1623–1662 · France
    185
15. James Clerk Maxwell

    1831–1879 · Scotland
    185
16. Jean le Rond d'Alembert

    1717–1783 · France
    185
17. Percy Williams Bridgman

    1882–1961 · United States
    185
18. Robert Boyle

    1627–1691 · Ireland
    185
19. Satyendra Nath Bose

    1894–1974 · India
    185
20. Thomas Young

    1773–1829 · United Kingdom
    185
21. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

    1824–1907 · United Kingdom
    185
22. Ettore Majorana

    1906–1938 · Italy
    183
23. Augustin-Jean Fresnel

    1788–1827 · France
    180
24. Galileo Galilei

    1564–1642 · Italy
    180
25. Heinrich Hertz

    1857–1894 · Germany
    180
26. Hendrik Lorentz

    1853–1928 · Netherlands
    180
27. James Prescott Joule

    1818–1889 · England
    180
28. Marie Curie

    1867–1934 · Poland
    180
29. Niels Bohr

    1885–1962 · Denmark
    180
30. Stephen Hawking

    1942–2018 · United Kingdom
    180
31. Werner Heisenberg

    1901–1976 · Germany
    180
32. Arnold Sommerfeld

    1868–1951 · Germany
    175
33. Michael Faraday

    1791–1867 · England
    175
34. Wolfgang Pauli

    1900–1958 · Austria
    175
35. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

    1910–1995 · India
    170
36. Lise Meitner

    1878–1968 · Austria
    165
37. Albert Einstein

    1879–1955 · Germany
    160
38. Léon Foucault

    1819–1868 · France
    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.