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John Stuart Mill is Cox's single highest-ranked subject. The reason is documentation: his father James Mill conducted a famously rigorous educational program from age three and recorded it in detail, and J.S. Mill himself wrote an Autobiography (1873) covering his early intellectual development. No other figure in Cox's sample had comparable childhood-records evidence.

Mill learned Greek at three, Latin at eight, and was reading Plato in the original by twelve. He never attended a university - his father considered the available institutions inadequate - and worked at the British East India Company while writing the philosophical and economic books that defined his career.

His major works include On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1861), The Subjection of Women (1869), and Principles of Political Economy (1848). His 1861 essay arguing for women's suffrage was decades ahead of the actual British franchise extension. He served briefly as a Member of Parliament (1865-1868).