10 - JAMES WOODS
James Woods is a movie, television and stage actor. He has won two Emmy Awards for his performances in “Promise” and “My Name is Bill W” and has been nominated twice for the Academy Awards. He also played the lead role in the television series entitled “Shark.” Aside from acting, Woods is also some sort of math whiz, having studied linear algebra in UCLA while he was still in high school. He was also a full scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before the acting bug hit him.
9 - Marilyn vos Savant
She is a popular columnist for Parade Magazine. Through “Ask Marilyn,” readers can send puzzles and questions on different subjects for vos Savant to solve and answer. Her IQ was the last recognized highest IQ by Guinness before the category was retired in 1990.
8. Kenneth Ferrell
Kenneth Ferrell is a North Carolina-based doctor who is a member of a number of elite IQ organizations, like the GenerIQ Society, Epimethius Society and the Order of Imhotep. He treats IQ exams as fun hobbies. Ferrell has created several verbal and numerical IQ tests, namely the 12354 and the QUINTIQ.
7. Garry Kasparov
He is a chess grandmaster from Russia who became the youngest undisputed world champion when he was 22 years old. He beat the then-champion Anatoly Karpov after a grueling duel in 1985. Kasparov held the official world title recognized by the international chess federation until 1993. A dispute occurred, however, forcing Kasparov to relinquish the crown and to form instead the rival Professional Chess Association. In 1997, he lost a chess match to Deep Blue, the first time a world champion had lost to a computer under standard time controls. Kasparov was recognized as the “classical” world champion until 2000, when he as defeated by Vladimir Kramnik. Still, he holds the record for the longest reign at number one.
6. Mislav Predavec
Mislav Predavec is the founder and president of the GenerIQ Society, an elite organization of some of the most intelligent people in the world. It counts among its members Kenneth Ferrell, who is at number eight in this list. Predavec is a Croatian professor of mathematics based in the country’s capital of Zagreb. He is also the owner and director of a trade company. He loves rock music, particularly the songs of Pink Floyd, and the arts, specifically the works of Leonardo da Vinci. He used to play Mafia Wars regularly as well.
5. Rick Rosner
By simply looking at his resume’, Rick Rosner would not be thought of as one of the most intelligent people in the world. He has a rough and tough demeanor, having spent a number of years as a bar bouncer. He has also worked as one of those waiters who go around in roller skates. In addition, Rosner has no qualms showing off his body, having been a stripper and nude model in the past. What sets him apart is his 192 IQ. He has put it to good use by joining the television game show called “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” And he does not want to rest on his laurels, as he spends up to 20 hours a day completing IQ exams in a bid to get further up this list.
4. Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis
Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis is a Greek national who works as a psychiatrist. He has earned degrees in three fields, namely philosophy, medical research technology and psychopharmacology. Katsioulis is also a good painter and a decent swimmer. He also indulges in a lot of traveling.
3. Kim Ung Yong
This South Korean has a tremendous capacity for both numbers and languages. He started speaking when he was only six months old. By the time he was three years old, he could read several languages already, including Korean, Japanese, German and English, as well as solve complex calculus problems. He also wrote poetry in Chinese and Korean and compiled enough essays and poems for two books. He was already auditing college courses when he was four. NASA then invited him to study in the U.S. when he was eight. By the time he was a teenager, he was already working for them. He then returned to Korea and switched fields from physics to civil engineering. He then published 90 papers about hydraulics.
2.Christopher Hirata
At the age of 13, Christopher Hirata made waves by getting a gold medal at the international physics Olympiad. The following year, he enrolled at Caltech. By the time he was 22 years old, he was able to earn his PhD from Princeton. He has been working for NASA’s project on how to colonize Mars.
1. Terrence Tao
He is a mathematician of Australian and American roots. If you think that math is hard enough, just take a peek into the subfields that Tao is involved with: additive combinatorics, analytic number theory, ergodic Ramsey theory, harmonic analysis, partial differential equations and random matrix theory. A recipient of the Fields medal in 2006, Tao holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has had good training, learning math when he was barely a toddler, solving arithmetic problems at two years old, studying college level math at nine and getting a gold medal in the international math Olympiad when he was 13. He got his PhD when he was only 20 from Princeton and became a full professor at UCLA when he was 24. He has already published 230 research papers.