How to read these profiles
A verified IQ score requires three things to be meaningful: a named test instrument (Stanford-Binet, WAIS-IV, Mensa-administered Cattell, etc.), a documented administration (where, when, by whom), and a public score (often via press, biography, or official organization records). Even with all three, scores from different tests are not directly comparable: a 196 on a high-ceiling instrument like the Mega Test is not the same population position as a 196 on the WAIS-IV.
Historical estimates are very different. They are retrospective psychometric inferences from biographical achievements - typically from Cox (1926), Simonton, or similar studies. We include them because they are a part of the historical record, but they should be read as educated guesses, not measurements. We label them clearly throughout.
For the actual instruments behind these scores, see our historical IQ tests archive and the 1880-2024 timeline.
People who actually took an IQ test
Each entry below took a documented, named standardized test and the result is reported in press, biography, or official records.
Marilyn vos Savant
Listed in Guinness World Records (1986-1989) for highest recorded IQ. Long-running "Ask Marilyn" Parade columnist.
Terence Tao
Fields Medal (2006). Began university coursework at 9. Now a UCLA professor working in harmonic analysis and combinatorics.
Christopher Hirata
Caltech at 14, PhD at 22, MacArthur Fellow (2018). Works on dark energy and gravitational lensing.
Kim Ung-yong
Listed in Guinness World Records for highest childhood IQ. NASA staffer at 8, returned to Korea for civil engineering academic career.
Christopher Langan
Self-taught philosopher and theorist behind the "CTMU" framework. Featured in 60 Minutes and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.
Evangelos Katsioulis
Founder of the World Intelligence Network and several high-IQ societies. Holds the highest verified scores on several adult high-ceiling tests.
Rick Rosner
Emmy-nominated writer (Jimmy Kimmel Live!). Holds among the highest documented scores on the Mega and Titan tests.
Edith Stern
Held over 100 patents at IBM. Subject of a deliberate intellectual enrichment program from infancy by her father.
Judit Polgár
Strongest female chess player in history. Grandmaster at 15, peak ELO 2735. Defeated 11 world champions in classical play.
Garry Kasparov
World Chess Champion 1985-2000. Highest ELO rating in history at the time. Score from a German-press administration of multiple instruments.
Bobby Fischer
World Chess Champion 1972. Score reported from his high-school testing in New York. Won the Cold War "Match of the Century" against Spassky.
Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time author. Hawking himself dismissed IQ talk: "People who boast about their IQ are losers." Score is widely circulated but origin is unclear.
Paul Allen
Co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates. Philanthropist and Allen Institute for Brain Science founder.
Magnus Carlsen
World Chess Champion 2013-2023. Highest classical ELO in history (2882). Officially never confirmed his own number.
People whose IQ was estimated retrospectively
These are not measurements. The figures below come from retrospective biographical studies (most famously Catharine Cox's 1926 The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses) that scored historical figures based on the precocity of their documented childhood accomplishments. The methodology has been heavily critiqued; we publish them as historical artifacts of the field, not as facts.
Leonardo da Vinci
Painter, engineer, anatomist, inventor. Cox's methodology penalized da Vinci for limited childhood records; Simonton later revised the estimate higher.
Albert Einstein
No test was ever administered. The "160" figure is a popular estimate from biographical analysis; Einstein himself rejected the IQ framework as a measure of his work.
Isaac Newton
Cox scored Newton at 130 based on his childhood records, with an adult-achievement-corrected estimate of 190. The Principia (1687) is the foundation of classical physics.
Galileo Galilei
Father of observational astronomy. Cox's adult-corrected estimate; her childhood-records-based estimate was substantially lower.
Blaise Pascal
Among Cox's highest-rated subjects due to extraordinary documented childhood precocity. Developed the first mechanical calculator at 19.
John Stuart Mill
Cox's highest-rated subject. Mill's father documented his unusually rigorous childhood education extensively, providing more biographical data than any other figure in her study.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Author of Faust, scientist, statesman. One of Cox's top-rated figures, again due to unusually well-documented childhood.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Cox's methodology was criticized for under-weighting musical-domain genius: Mozart's estimate is comparatively modest despite extraordinary documented precocity.
Voltaire
Author of Candide. Cox rated him highly due to documented intellectual precocity and prolific output across genres.
Marie Curie
First woman to win a Nobel, only person to win Nobels in two sciences (physics, chemistry). No formal IQ testing; estimate is retrospective.
Nikola Tesla
AC power, induction motor, Tesla coil. Estimate from biographical analysis; no contemporaneous testing existed for Tesla's adult life.
Ada Lovelace
First computer programmer (notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine, 1843). Estimate based on documented mathematical correspondence.
Modern figures with a circulated number but no documented test
These are not measurements either. For many well-known living figures, an IQ number circulates widely online with no traceable source - no named test, no administration, no public score. We include these because people search for them, but we mark them clearly as reported, explain where the figure actually comes from, and do not present it as fact.
Elon Musk
The widely-shared "155" is an uncited internet estimate. Musk has never released a documented IQ score; the figure is reverse-inferred from his achievements, which is not how IQ is measured.
Mark Zuckerberg
The circulated "152" has no source. Zuckerberg has never published an IQ; the figure is reverse-inferred from building Facebook, which is not a measurement.
Bill Gates
The "160" is uncited. His reported ~1590 SAT is a real data point but is not an IQ score - correlated, not interchangeable. No documented IQ exists.
Steve Jobs
The "160" is an uncited estimate. A biographer-reported childhood testing anecdote exists, but it is an anecdote, not a documented IQ administration.
Jeff Bezos
No consistent IQ number circulates and none is documented. Any figure is reverse-inferred from Amazon's success, which is not how IQ is measured.
Jordan Peterson
A psychologist who lectures on IQ has never disclosed his own. Circulated numbers are uncited; he has declined to state a figure.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tyson has said he never took an IQ test and is dismissive of them. No documented score exists; any number attributed to him is invented.
Kanye West
West has self-reported a figure near 133, but self-reported numbers are unverified - no named test, examiner, or score record exists.
Taylor Swift
No documented test and no reliable number. Songwriting and business acumen are real but cannot be reduced to an IQ figure.
MrBeast
No documented IQ exists. His mastery of the YouTube algorithm is real but is a specific skill, not an IQ measurement.
Joe Rogan
No documented test and no reliable number circulates. Interviewing skill and curiosity cannot be reverse-inferred into an IQ score.
Larry Page
No documented IQ and no reliable number circulates. Any figure is reverse-inferred from building Google, which is not how IQ is measured.
Sergey Brin
No documented test and no reliable number. Reverse-inferring an IQ from Google's success is invalid.
Sam Altman
No documented IQ exists and no reliable figure circulates. Leading OpenAI does not produce or reveal a tested number.
Jensen Huang
No documented test and no reliable number. Any IQ figure is reverse-inferred from NVIDIA's success.
Warren Buffett
The circulated "150" is uncited. Buffett himself says temperament matters more than IQ; no documented test exists.
Mark Cuban
No documented IQ and no reliable number. Reverse-inferring a figure from business success is invalid.
Richard Dawkins
No published IQ test. His Oxford record is the real signal; no number is documented.
Noam Chomsky
No published IQ test; Chomsky is himself skeptical of IQ testing. No documented number exists.
Michio Kaku
No published IQ test. His real record (including a garage-built particle accelerator) is the signal, not a number.
Natalie Portman
No published IQ test. A Harvard psychology degree and co-authored scientific papers are the real, documented record.
James Woods
The "180" is uncited. His MIT attendance is the real, sourced record; no IQ test is documented.
Quentin Tarantino
The "160" is uncited. A self-taught high-school dropout, his mastery is demonstrated, not a tested number.
Lady Gaga
The "166" is uncited. Early NYU Tisch admission and songwriting craft are the real signals, not a test.
Rowan Atkinson
The "178" is uncited. His Oxford electrical-engineering MSc is the real, documented record.
Conan O'Brien
No documented IQ. Harvard magna cum laude and Harvard Lampoon president are the real record.
Ashton Kutcher
The "160" is uncited. Biochemical-engineering studies and successful tech investing are the real signals.
Cardi B
No documented test and no reliable number. Business savvy and social-media skill cannot be reduced to an IQ.
Sam Harris
No published IQ test. Stanford philosophy and a UCLA neuroscience PhD are the real record.
Brian Cox
The physicist (not the actor). No published IQ test; his Manchester PhD and CERN work are the real record.
Hikaru Nakamura
No documented IQ. His FIDE rating is a real measure of chess skill, but chess ability is not an IQ.
Fabiano Caruana
No documented IQ. A near-record FIDE rating measures chess skill, which is domain-specific, not an IQ.
Lex Fridman
No published IQ test and no reliable number. His AI research background is the real, documented record.
Why these numbers are slippery
- Test ceilings vary. A "200" on the Mega Test is roughly equivalent to about a 170 on the WAIS-IV, because the Mega Test is built for the extreme right tail and the WAIS ceiling is much lower.
- Childhood vs adult scores. A child's ratio IQ (mental age / chronological age × 100) can exceed 200 in early years and "regress" toward 130-150 in adulthood. This is not a real cognitive decline - it is the score-equivalence shifting from the early-Binet ratio formula to the deviation IQ that adult tests use.
- Self-reported numbers are unreliable. Many "celebrity IQ" figures circulating online are unsourced or self-reported. We mark those clearly.
- The Cox method overweighted childhood documentation. Subjects whose childhoods were poorly documented (such as Leonardo da Vinci) were systematically under-estimated by Cox; subjects whose fathers wrote about them extensively (such as John Stuart Mill) were systematically over-estimated.
Cite this page
This page is part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content and curation are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). BibTeX · RIS · CSL JSON
The retrospective IQ estimates of historical figures discussed above (Cox 1926) are inferences from biographical records, not measurements. Treat them as historiographic, not psychometric.
Want a contemporary IQ score?
If you want a modern score using contemporary norms, our free full IQ test is available separately.