“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary person sees one.” Intelligent people aren’t necessarily rich or famous individuals. However, they still stand out from ordinary people because of the way they think, synthesize facts, take risks, and adapt quickly. Their curious mind, analytical perception, speedy thinking, and eagerness to learn allow them to make breakthroughs like none before. Intelligence can be difficult to measure. However, that hasn’t stopped some of the most curious people in this world from designing intelligent tests to figure out who is the most intelligent person in the world. Based on such internationally recognized tests, here are the top 15 people with the highest IQ in the world.
YoungHoon Kim of South Korea is recognized as having the highest IQ in the world, with a reported score of 276 by the Giga Society, a society of highly intelligent individuals. Kim is a member of the society and serves as an intelligence specialist advisor for prestigious entities such as the World Mind Sports Council, World Memory Championships, World Speed-Reading Championship, and World Mind Mapping Championship. Additionally, he is the executive director and president of the United Sigma Intelligence Association (USIA). Kim has demonstrated exceptional abilities in various high-level intelligence tests, achieving flawless scores. He is one of the people with the highest IQ in the world.
Marnen Laibow-Koser, a musical prodigy, demonstrated an exceptional IQ score of 268 as a child. His musical journey began at the young age of 3, and he has continued to excel in composing and performing. Marnen pursued composition studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Purchase College as an undergraduate, and later obtained a master’s degree in contemporary improvisation from the New England Conservatory in December 2014. Today, he is a versatile professional, working as a composer, performing musician, web developer, music copyist, and engraver, and self-described “post-hippie arts geek.”
Ainan Celeste Cawley, a former child prodigy, is often referred to as an “omnibus” prodigy due to his wide range of skills. It is estimated that he has an IQ of 263. At the age of eight, according to his father, he was a scientist, mathematical genius, software programmer, self-trained pianist, writer, director and editor, and film score composer. He enrolled in the chemistry program at Singapore Polytechnic at the same time. The World Intellectual Property Organization granted Cawley and his father a patent in 2011 for a procedure they developed for “enhancing precocity” in kids and grownups and producing young prodigies.
With an IQ ranging from 225 to 230, Australian-American mathematician Terence Tao is referred to as the “Mozart of Math.” In 2006, he was awarded the Fields Medal (equivalent to the Nobel Prize in mathematics) in recognition of his achievements in the fields of additive number theory, harmonic analysis, combinatorics, and partial differential equations. At the age of seven, he began taking calculus lessons. Tao graduated from Princeton University with a PhD by the age of 20. He began teaching at the University of California in 1996 and was elevated to professor four years later. He is definitely one of the people with the highest IQ in the world.
Marilyn Vos Savant, an American magazine columnist, holds the Guinness World Record for the highest recorded IQ. When she was ten years old, she took the adult-level Stanford-Binet test, and her score was 228. 30 years later, she was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Highest IQ” for both child and adult scores for five years before being elected into the Guinness Hall of Fame. She made the cut in American Magazine with the logic-based Numbrix Puzzle. Later, she had her own “Ask Marilyn” column in the magazine where she responded to concerns about science, philosophy, calculations, health, and lifestyle.
Given his IQ of 225, it is not surprise that Christopher Hirata mastered calculus in elementary school. At the age of fourteen, he completed his high school education and enrolled in the California Institute of Technology to study physics. After traveling throughout the nation for four years, Hirata finished his doctorate in physics from Princeton University in 2005. Since 2013, he has been a professor in the astronomical and physics departments at Ohio State University, where he teaches courses on astrophysics and dark matter. His study of radiative transmission over the reionization phase has earned him praise.
At 210 IQ points, Kim Ung-Yong, a South Korean civil engineer, is known as a “failed genius.” Ung-Yong was a child prodigy who could speak four different tongues by the time he was five years old and answer intricate mathematical problems at the age of four. At eight years old, he came to the United States to attend the University of Colorado to study physics. Shortly after, he started working for NASA. Ung-Yong eventually told the former child prodigy that he went back to Korea because he was lonely. He started teaching full-time at Shinhan University in the Gyeonggi province of Korea in 2014.
When 11-year-old Dylan Jones started in calculus and quantitative chemistry undergraduate courses at Colorado School of Mines, a research university with an emphasis on engineering, in 2002, he made headlines. With an IQ of 200, he graduated from the Colorado School of Mines at the age of 16 with degrees in math and computer science, as well as minors in bioengineering and the life sciences. Jones started his studies to become a neurosurgeon at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine a year later. He also speaks several languages, including Latin, French, Spanish, and German.
Sho Yano earned the moniker of “real-life Doogie Howser,” because he learned to read at the age of two, began writing the following year, and started writing music by the age of five. At eight years old, he took the SATs, and with a score of 1500, he enrolled the next year at Chicago’s Loyola University. After graduating three years later, Yano enrolled in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine for his postgraduate studies. There, he earned his doctorate in molecular genetics and cell biology and graduated as a physician at age twenty-one. At 35 years old, he is a pediatric neurologist at Comer Children’s Hospital and teaches pediatrics as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
Evangelos Katsioulis is a Greek physician, psychiatrist, and psychotherapist. He has the highest documented IQ scores (198–205) on tests intended to assess extraordinary intelligence. He is the founder of the World Intelligence Network, a global non-profit that promotes talents evaluation and growth, and he holds university degrees in both philosophy and IT. He has achieved prominence in almost all of the fields in which he has engaged, including neurology, radiation oncology, and general medicine. He is an expert in psychiatry and psychopharmacology, and he has made major advances in the study of antipsychotic medications.
At the age of ten, Michael Grost, who has an IQ of 200+, started college at Michigan State University and graduated at the age of fifteen. He went on to graduate from MSU with a master’s and a doctorate in mathematics. His IQ was deemed “too high to be tested meaningfully” by Times Magazine in 1964. At seventy years old, he writes thriller and detective fiction, does abstract painting, and has a keen interest in artificial intelligence. His other areas of interest include classical music, poetry, movies, art, and architecture.
With an IQ of 195, Christopher Michael Langan is a horse rancher, independent researcher, and “reality theorist” who was formerly a cowboy and bouncer. One remarkable thing about him is that he started reading before the age of four and spoke at the age of six months. He is most famous for his Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe, which he created in the 1980s and refers to as “the CTMU.” He was dubbed the smartest guy in America by numerous journalists in 1999. Additionally, he explained how Stephen Hawking’s Imaginary Time theory of cosmology and John Archibald Wheeler’s Participatory Universe combine to form a true “Theory of Everything.”
American television writer and reality television personality Rick Rosner is well-known for his peculiar career path and purportedly high IQ test results. He is said to have scored among the highest on IQ tests (192-198) ever recorded, which assess exceptionally high intelligence. After working as a bouncer and in a variety of odd jobs, Rosner started penning scripts for TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The World’s Funniest! He received one Emmy nomination, six Writers Guild of America nominations, and one win.
For almost twenty years, Soviet-born chess champion Garry Kasparov—whose IQ is said to be in the 190s—was regarded as the greatest chess player in the world. In fact, Kasparov made history as the youngest global chess champion at the age of 22. He is renowned for taking on non-human opponents in his chess games. In 1996, he managed to defeat Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer designed specifically for the game. However, the following year, the machine defeated him again after an update to its software.
Michael Kearney is well-known for educating undergraduates even as a teenager and for breaking multiple world records before graduation. At the age of ten, he earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of South Alabama, making him the youngest person in history to graduate from college. The LA Times stated in 1995 that Kearney’s IQ was “nearly 200.” He earned his master’s degree in computer science at Vanderbilt University at 18, his master’s degree in chemistry from Middle Tennessee State University at 14, and his doctorate at the age of 22.
So, those were the top 15 people with the highest IQ in the world. As we can see, individuals with high IQs are adaptable, eager to try new things, and open to investigating many approaches to a problem. They desire to know more about how the world functions because they are inquisitive about it. Because of this attribute, they can influence the course of human society and the world at large.
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