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Christopher Langan is best known as a self-taught philosopher whose adult test scores on the Mega Test and the Hoeflin Power Test (also called the Titan Test) place him among the highest-scoring adults ever measured on those instruments. The Mega Test is designed with item difficulty extending into the deep right tail of the IQ distribution, well beyond the WAIS-IV ceiling.

He developed a metaphysical framework he calls the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU), published over decades in self-distributed monographs and academic-adjacent venues. The CTMU has been criticized by mainstream philosophers and embraced by parts of the high-IQ-society community.

Langan came to broader public attention through a 1999 60 Minutes profile and Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 book Outliers, which used him as a counterexample to the idea that high IQ alone produces a celebrated career. He worked as a bouncer in Long Island for most of his adult life.