We know of the legendary Einstein or Isaac Newton and how the men are some of the smartest people with IQ scores of 160+ while the average person has 100. But we have neo-geniuses who although less known, have extraordinary IQ scores with some ranging in the 200 levels. Though IQ tests are a bit controversial, some organizations like The Mensa International and the Guinness Book of World Records have officially recognized some of these intellectuals.
Terence Tao
1. Terence Tao
With an outstanding IQ of 230, Terence Tao’s parents Billy and Grace Tao noticed their two year old son teaching 5 year olds how to spell and how to add numbers. When asked how he learned to do that, Terence said ‘by watching a show called Sesame Street on TV. At the age of ten, he began participating in International Mathematical Olympiads. He won a bronze medal in 1986, a silver medal in 1987 and a gold medal in 1988, becoming the youngest ever gold medalist in the Mathematical Olympiad. At just the age of 14 years, Terence commenced his full time university education. By the time he was 16 years he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree and had his Ph.D at 20years. Tao works at the University of California, LA in the Mathematics department handling ‘ordinary’ maths problems like partial differential equations, additive combinatorics, analytic number theory and random matrix.
2. Christopher Hirata
Secondly, we have Christopher Hirata who has an IQ of 225. At just the age of 13years, he received a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad and the next year he was enrolled into Caltech University which means he commenced his university education at the age of 14years. Furthermore, at only the age of 16years he was already working with NASA on project exploring the possibility of colonizing Mars. Yes, you read correctly! Working with NASA at the age of 16 years! And that’s not all; he got his Ph.D. at 22years old from Princeton. Christopher is known to be an outstanding young cosmologist and astrophysicist whose research ranges from purely theoretical investigations to original data analysis.
3. Kim Ung Yonga
Third in line is Kim Ung Yonga. First, we must start with the fact that Kim has been featured at some point in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most intelligent man. Kim has an IQ of 210. Kim takes things to a whole another level. You do not just land on the Guinness book of records as the world’s most intelligent man. This guy started university education at just the age of 3. At age 3, Kim could read several languages, including Korean, Japanese, German and English, as well as solve complex calculus problems. By the time he was 16 years, he had received a Ph.D in Physics from the Colorado State University and was working with NASA. He later decided to change to Civil engineering where added a Ph.D. Kim has written 90 papers on hydraulics.
Ye
June 6, 2013 at 7:02 am
sad that after 25 years their high IQ’s have not been fully utilized. No flying cars, free energy,string theory research just like the writer of Lord of the Rings. 300 points 54 languages but no scientific or sociological contributions
Jack
October 28, 2014 at 9:44 am
First off, there is no such thing as free energy, Ye. Second, the work people like Yung and Hirata did for NASA led to many advancements in the space program. Yung left NASA and the US to go back home to help Korea build better infrastructure. Third, we have flying cars but no one is going to let a bunch of non pilots fly machines they can’t maintain. Have you seen how people keep their ground based cars?!
As for string theory, well I’m sure some of them have advanced the theory mathematically but I feel string theory is probably never going to pan out as we’d like it too. I agree with Einstein that if a theory is too complex its probably worthless.