The Greatest Scientists of All Time — Ranked

A great scientist changes what we know is true. Newton showed that the same law that pulls an apple to the ground holds the moon in orbit. Darwin showed that all life is related. Einstein showed that time itself bends.

This list ranks the scientists whose discoveries reshaped human understanding, drawn from physics, biology, chemistry, and beyond.

Ainan Celeste Cawley

b. 1999 • SG

IQ 250

Being a child prodigy with estimated IQ of 250.

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William James Sidis

b. 1898 • d. 1944 • US

IQ 250

The Animate And The Inanimate

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Chris Hirata

b. 1982 • US

IQ 225

Being the youngest U.S. citizen to receive an International Physics Olympiad gold medal. Starting working for NASA at the age of 16.

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Terence Chi-Shen Tao

b. 1975 • AU

IQ 220

When he was two years old, he was able to perform simple arithmetic. By the time he was nine, he was studying college-level math courses. An

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Aristotle

b. 0384 • GR

IQ 200

A genius whose philosophical ideas are still taught, but his contributions to physics retarded progress for almost two millennia.

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Edith Stern

b. 1952 • US

IQ 200

Holding over 100 US patents and being awarded the ASME Kate Gleason Award.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

b. 1749 • d. 1832 • DE

IQ 200

Faust

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Leonardo Da Vinci

b. 1452 • d. 1519 • IT

IQ 200

Painting, drawing, sculpting, science, engineering, architecture, anatomy

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Michael Grost

b. 1954 • US

IQ 200

Starting university at the tender age of 10, the maths prodigy is now a computer scientist, according to reports.

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Michael Kearney

b. 1984 • US

IQ 200

Child prodigy, youngest person to ever graduate from college (age 10)

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Leopold and Loeb

b. 1905 • d. 1971 • US

IQ 200

Being murderer obsessed with committing the “perfect crime.” Their murder of a 14 years old was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie

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Sho Yano

b. 1990 • US

IQ 200

The youngest student at the University of Chicago to receive an MD, Yano had one degree under his belt at the age of 12.

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Vitalik Buterin

b. 1994 • RU

IQ 200

Ethereum founder, Bitcoin Magazine

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Walter O'Brien (Obrien)

b. 1975 • IE

IQ 197

Inspiration of the television series Scorpion

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Empedocles

b. 0490 • GR

IQ 195

An ancient theory of natural selection; mass conservation; and the four elements which are now often misattributed to Aristotle.

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Gilbert N. Lewis

b. 1875 • d. 1946 • US

IQ 195

Covalent bondLewis dot structuresValence bond theoryElectronic theory of acids and basesChemical thermodynamicsFugacityHeavy waterNamed phot

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Hermann von Helmholtz

b. 1821 • d. 1894 • DE

IQ 195

His mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone

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Ludwig Boltzmann

b. 1844 • d. 1906 • AT

IQ 195

The development of statistical mechanics

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Nikola Tesla

b. 1856 • d. 1943 • HR

IQ 195

Inventing the Tesla coil, alternating current machinery, and a transatlantic communications system. Is regarded as one of the most important

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Pierre-Simon Laplace

b. 1749 • d. 1827 • FR

IQ 195

Predicting the existence of black holes

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Archimedes

b. 0287 • GR

IQ 190

Archimedes' principleArchimedes' screwhydrostaticsleversinfinitesimalsNeuseis constructions

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Athanasius Kircher

b. 1602 • d. 1680 • DE

IQ 190

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Baron d'Holbach

b. 1723 • d. 1789 • DE

IQ 190

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Carl Friedrich Gauss

b. 1777 • d. 1855 • DE

IQ 190

Gaussian elimination, also known as "row reduction" or "Gaussian method" • Gauss–Jordan elimination • Gauss–Seidel method • Gauss's cyclotom

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Christiaan Huygens

b. 1629 • d. 1695 • NL

IQ 190

Explanation of Saturn's rings • Centrifugal force • Collision formulae • Gambler's ruin • Pendulum clock • Huygens–Fresnel principle • Wave

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Enrico Fermi

b. 1901 • d. 1954 • IT

IQ 190

Demonstrating first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction Fermi–Dirac statistics Fermi's golden rule Fermi paradox Fermi method Fermi theo

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Erwin Schrödinger

b. 1887 • d. 1961 • AT

IQ 190

Schrödinger's cat

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Francis Bacon

b. 1561 • d. 1626 • ENG

IQ 190

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Voltaire

b. 1694 • d. 1778 • FR

IQ 190

The novel Candide

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Friedrich Nietzsche

b. 1844 • d. 1900 • DE

IQ 190

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good & Evil

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Giordano Bruno

b. 1548 • d. 1600 • IT

IQ 190

His cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model

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Isaac Newton

b. 1643 • d. 1727 • ENG

IQ 190

Newtonian mechanics • Universal gravitation • Calculus • Newton's laws of motion • Optics • Binomial series • Principia • Newton's method

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John von Neumann

b. 1903 • d. 1957 • HU

IQ 190

Abelian von Neumann algebra Affiliated operator Amenable group Arithmetic logic unit Artificial viscosity Axiom of regularity Axiom of limit

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Joseph-Louis Lagrange

b. 1736 • d. 1813 • IT

IQ 190

Analytical mechanics, celestial mechanics, mathematical analysis, number theory, theory of equations

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Henri Poincaré

b. 1854 • d. 1912 • FR

IQ 190

Poincaré conjecture

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Leonhard Euler

b. 1707 • d. 1783 • CH

IQ 190

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Linus Pauling

b. 1901 • d. 1994 • US

IQ 190

Alpha sheet • Ancestral sequence reconstruction • Backbonding • Beta sheet • Bond order

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Max Planck

b. 1858 • d. 1947 • DE

IQ 190

On the Second Principles of Mechanical Heat Theory (1879)

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Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

b. 1796 • d. 1832 • FR

IQ 190

Carnot cycle • Carnot efficiency • Carnot theorem • Carnot heat engine

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Paul Dirac

b. 1902 • d. 1984 • ENG

IQ 190

Sharing the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory"

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Philip Emeagwali

b. 1954 • NG

IQ 190

being the "Bill Gates of Africa"

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Pierre Gassendi

b. 1592 • d. 1655 • FR

IQ 190

Calor vitalis (vital heat)

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Vilfredo Pareto

b. 1848 • d. 1923 • IT

IQ 190

The Pareto Principle

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Wilhelm Ostwald

b. 1853 • d. 1932 • LV

IQ 190

Catalysis, Coining the term 'Mole' and HSL and HSV

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Marilyn vos Savant

b. 1946 • US

IQ 186

Penning the 'Ask Marilyn' column in Parade magazine and solving the 'Monty Hall Problem' in the process.

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Alan Turing

b. 1912 • d. 1954 • ENG

IQ 185

Cryptanalysis of the Enigma • Turing's proof • Turing machine • Turing test • Unorganised machine • Turing pattern • Turing reduction • The

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Alfred J. Lotka

b. 1880 • d. 1949 • US

IQ 185

The Lotka–Volterra equations

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Arthur Schopenhauer

b. 1788 • d. 1860 • DE

IQ 185

The World as Will and Representation (1818)

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Auguste Comte

b. 1798 • d. 1857 • FR

IQ 185

Formulating the doctrine of positivism.

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Blaise Pascal

b. 1623 • d. 1662 • FR

IQ 185

Pascal's law

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Ctesibius

b. 0285 • d. 0222 • EG

IQ 185

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Democritus

b. 0460 • GR

IQ 185

Atomism and Aetiology

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Epicurus

b. 0341 • d. 0270 • GR

IQ 185

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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

b. 1775 • d. 1854 • DE

IQ 185

Naturphilosophie

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Heraclitus

b. 0535 • d. 0475 • GR

IQ 185

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Hero of Alexandria

b. 0010 • d. 0070 • GR

IQ 185

Aeolipile • Heron's fountain • Heron's formula • Vending machine

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Humphry Davy

b. 1778 • d. 1829 • GB

IQ 185

Electrolysis, aluminium, sodium, potassium, calcium, strontium, magnesium, barium, boron, Davy lamp

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Immanuel Kant

b. 1724 • d. 1804 • DE

IQ 185

Critique of Pure Reason

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James Clerk Maxwell

b. 1831 • d. 1879 • SCT

IQ 185

Statistical mechanics • Maxwell's equations • Displacement current • Maxwell relations

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Jean le Rond d'Alembert

b. 1717 • d. 1783 • FR

IQ 185

D'Alembert criterion • D'Alembert force • D'Alembert's form of the principle of virtual work

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the greatest scientist of all time?

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are the two most-cited names. Newton invented calculus and classical mechanics; Einstein gave us relativity, the photoelectric effect, and the foundation of modern physics.

What scientist had the highest IQ?

Isaac Newton (estimated IQ 190–193), Leonardo da Vinci (200), and Albert Einstein (160) are the most-cited high-IQ scientists.

Who has won the most Nobel Prizes in science?

Marie Curie won two — Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911) — and remains the only person to win Nobels in two different sciences.