Top 10 Most Intelligent People in the World

When it comes to intelligence, everyone is different. Some people are born as child prodigies and are simply clever from birth, others may not appear from the outside to be intelligent but possess the power of learning and the ability remember everything they take in. Here we look at the top 10 most intelligent people in the world.

10) Marilyn Vos Savant

Marilyn Vos Savant is an American author, lecturer, and playwright who is well known for her intelligence having risen to fame on the back of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for her high IQ. The St. Louis Missouri native who was born in August 1946 has written the popular “Ask Marilyn” Sunday column in Parade magazine since 1986.

9) Fabiano Luigi Caruana

Born in 1992, 20 year old Fabiano Luigi Caruana became a Grandmaster in chess at the age of just 14, making him the youngest to achieve such an honour in both Italy and America, where he holds dual nationality. The child prodigy is currently the eighth best ranked chess player in the world and number one in the junior ranks.

8) Philip Emeagwali

A Nigerian-born engineer and computer scientist/geologist, Phillip Emeagwali makes it onto the list of the top 10 most intelligent people in the world thanks to his remarkable IQ score of 190, this despite his early schooling being disrupted by the Nigeria – Biafran war. Emeagwali is a winner of the IEEE Gordon Bell Prize for his use of a connection machine super-computer in analysis of petroleum fields.

7) Gregory R. Smith

Gregory R. Smith, not to be confused with the actor of the same name, is another of the child prodigies on the list and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize aged just 12 years old. The nomination came two years after he had entered college in the year 2000. Today, Gregory is the founder of International Youth Advocates.

6) Judit Polgár

Hungarian-born Judit Polgár is a Grandmaster chess player having achieved the title in 1991 at the age of just 15 years and four months – the youngest person ever to do so at that time. Judit is far and away the greatest female ever to play the game of chess and has defeated nine current and former chess world champions, on her way to her highest ever world chess ranking of eighth.

5) Akrit Jaswal

Akrit Jaswal can boast an IQ off 146 and the title of surgeon which he achieved aged just 7! Born in 1993, Akrit became a surgeon when he treated a 7 year old girl whose family were too poor to see a doctor. He is currently studying Mathematics at the College of Chandigurh in his home country.

4) Garry Kasparov

One of the most famous chess players in history, Garry Kasparov makes it in at number four on our list of the top 10 most intelligent people in the world. The youngest ever World Chess Champion at 22, Russian born Garry held the FIDE title from 1985 until 1993 before setting up his own Professional Chess Association. Kasparov can boast an IQ of 190.

3) Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is known the world over and has even found himself immortalised in an episode of the Simpsons such is his popularity. Despite being wheelchair-bound due to his progressive form of motor neurone disease, Hawking’s work as a theoretical physicist has spanned over 40 years and produced many of modern sciences key findings. His public appearances and books have led to Hawking receiving numerous awards and medals, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.

2) Christopher Michael Langan

Christopher Michael Langan is an American autodidact who is known as the “smartest man in America” thanks to his IQ score of 195. Langan who was born in San Francisco, California, but grew up in Montana taught himself to read by the age of four and went on to learn advanced maths, physics, philosophy, Latin and Greek, all without the help of teachers. Despite this high IQ, Langan went on to work in construction and as a bouncer before finding fame and releasing his own “theory of the relationship between mind and reality” called, “Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU).”

1) Kim Ung-Yong

Universally recognised as the most intelligent person in the world, Kim Ung Yong is at the top of our list. Yong, who was born and lives in Korea, has an IQ of 210 and has featured in the Guinness Book of world Records as a result. Ever since he was young, Kim-Ung has shown his intelligence, learning to speak at six months and read a host of languages, including Japanese, German and English by the time he was three. He is currently a doctor in civil engineering.

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