Many people believe Albert Einstein was the smartest person who ever lived, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was a genius and had the power to visualize things no one else was able to prior to his break through theories, but in sheer intelligence there were a lot of people who had higher I.Qs. Some think the smartest person who ever lived was William James Sidis. He was born in Boston in 1898 and became famous as a child prodigy. He was incredibly intelligent. When his I.Q. was estimated it was thought it was at least 50 points higher than Einstein, but could have been as much as 100 points higher. He was reading the N.Y. Times at 2 years old and could speak many different languages by the time he was 11 years old including English, Latin, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian. He entered Harvard University at 11 years old. As he grew older he decided to avoid the public spotlight. When he got to Harvard he was constantly teased and humiliated and this made him decide to stay away from academia. He did try being a math professor, but gave it up after a short period of time and moved from city to city using an alias. Unfortunately his genius was wasted. He became an author using different names and no one knows how many books he published. He died from a brain hemorrhage at age 46.

It is said only about 1 percent of the population has an I.Q. above 135. Einstein was said to have an I.Q. of about 160. Terrence Tao has the incredible I.Q. of 230. When he was 8 years old he got a 760 on the pre-1995 SAT. He had his PhD from Princeton at 20 years old and became the youngest full professor at UCLA at 24 years old. He has a list of awards as long as your arm and they include the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, MacArthur Fellowship, SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, Clay Research Award, Bocher Memorial Prize, Salem Prize, Crafoord Prize in Mathematics, the Ostrowski Prize, Alan T. Waterman Award, the George Polya Price and the King Faisal International Prize. When he was 16 years old he received his master’s degree from Flinders University and won the Fulbright Scholarship and left his home country Australia and came to the United States.

Christopher Hirata was already working for NASA when he was 16 years old. His job was to explore the possibility of colonizing Mars. Christopher has and I.Q. of 225. At 18 years old he was already at Princeton studying for his PhD in Astrophysics. He is an assistant professor in astrophysics at Cal Tech. One of the hot topics lately is dark matter and dark energy. One of Hirata’s area of expertise is in dark energy. Hirata is an American.

Kim Ung-Yong has an I.Q. of 210. It is said he could speak fluently at 6 months old. As incredible as this sounds, at 3 years old he was a guest student at Hanyang University. He worked for NASA and left that agency when he reached the ripe old age of 16 years. As one would suspect he was offered to attend the most prestigious universities in Korea, but went to a provincial college and earned a PhD in Civil Engineering. He works today in his field.

Not very many people in the world have an I.Q. 200 or above, but most people accept that an I.Q. above 145 is genius. I am telling you this, because the rest of the people I am writing about are below 200, but they are geniuses never the less.

Christopher Michael Langan has an I.Q. of 195 but some say it is really higher, but the 195 has been verified. When he was 6 months old he was talking and he was reading at 3 years old. He got a perfect score on the SATs, but then did something very strange. He dropped out of Montana State University, because he felt his instructors weren’t smart enough to teach him anything. If he would have stuck to a profession someone like him may have changed the world, but he bounced around as a Construction worker, cowboy, forest service firefighter, farmhand, bouncer and writer. He is an American.

Philip Emeagwali is said to possess an I.Q. of 190. He left school at an early age, 13 years old, to fight in the Nigerian-Biafran war. He acquired an equivalency high school diploma, received a B.S. in math from Oregon State University and 3 Master’s Degrees in Math, Environmental and Marine Engineering. He was the plaintiff in a famous court case which he lost. It had to do with the fact he was in the PhD program at the University of Michigan, but was eventually denied the degree and sued on the basis of racial discrimination. He is a Nigerian.

Another possessor of a 190 point I.Q. is pretty famous, his name is Garry Kasparov and he is a chess genius. Before I go any further I have to let you know not everyone thinks Kasparov has a 190 I.Q. A German study said it was only 135, but this is very had to believe based on his performances such as playing to a draw against a computer in 2003 which could perform 3 million moves per second. He also defeated the IBM Deep Blue computer in 1997. He felt the computer cheated, because human intelligence was directing at least some of the moves and requested the logs from IBM, but was refused and the computer retired. He is Azerbaijanian.

All of the above people had a much higher I.Q. than Einstein, but some say it was not only Einstein’s I.Q. which made him what he was, but the wiring of his brain was different allowing for connections we just don’t have. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I guess anything is possible.