Robwin, I believe one of the Little People desires to make his obeisance.
Gaze upon us, mortal, and despair.
Posted on 01/26/2015 8:10:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Who was the smartest person to ever live? There are certainly many worthy contenders. Today, the very name of "Einstein" is synonymous with genius. Others may suggest Stephen Hawking. Those who appreciate literature and music may proffer William Shakespeare or Ludwig van Beethoven. Historians may recommend Benjamin Franklin.
Before I submit my own suggestion, we must first discuss what we even mean by smart. Colloquially, we routinely interchange the words smart and intelligent, but they are not necessarily the same thing. There is an ongoing debate among psychologists, neuroscientists, and artificial intelligence experts on what intelligence actually is, but for our purposes here, a simple dictionary definition will suffice: "capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc."
Implicit in this definition of intelligence is general knowledge. An intelligent person capable of understanding quantum mechanics is useless to society if he is completely ignorant. So, a truly smart person will know a lot of things, preferably about many different topics. He should be a polymath, in other words.
Finally, there is the element of creativity. Creative people think in ways in which most other people do not. Where society sees a dead end, a creative person sees an opportunity.
Which person from history was the bodily manifestation of intelligence, knowledge, and creativity? Our blog's namesake, Isaac Newton, of course!
What was Newton's IQ? It's impossible to say. IQ tests didn't exist in the 17th Century, and if they had, Mr. Newton certainly would not have deigned to spend 90 minutes filling out ovals on a multiple choice test. Besides, he likely would have finished the test early and then spent the remaining time correcting errors and devising more difficult questions.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearscience.com ...
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lol
Robwin, I believe one of the Little People desires to make his obeisance.
Gaze upon us, mortal, and despair.
The first paragraph suggestions seem to confuse intelligence and talent, I don’t believe they are the same thing.
Wile E. Coyote (super genius).
CC
Answer: My father, Lord rest his soul.
I tried to narrow it down to a single individual, I was about to choose Heisenberg .... but I was uncertain.
:-)
Eh?
He literally had the perfect arrangement and he blew it.
Da Vinci or Newton. Its really hard to make a much better case for anyone else. Solomon? please,,,,i think any of the founders exceeded him easily.
Eve must have been some really hot chick. Of course she was also the only one around.
Gotta toss Telsa’s name out there, as we wouldn’t be using wireless electronic devices without his work on AC power.
Euler, Gauss, Boltzmann, Einstein, Feynman, von Neumann, Jim Robinson.
I nominate Josiah Willard Gibbs, then maybe Ludwig Boltzmann. Even in Einstein’s time the writing was on the wall regarding both quantum physics and relativity, but for the two individuals above, they just pulled stuff out from pure force of genius and intellectual perseverance. The smartest nazi was Pascual Jordan.
Leó Szilárd ?
The ones in history before the calculator and pen and pencil and proper paper who thought up all of the above and invented math and language and sciences of everything so others could carry on (common core will end this advancement) and did so under great hardship we wusses of today would complain endless about and not do anything about but they did....
Imagine how our ancestors of not so long ago had to cope with everyday things we take for granted like shelter and clean water, hot and cold and fresh food. Those who figured it out so we can sit back and have it easy are the smartest.
In the catsgory of those who are not the Son of God, I submit a nomination for Erasmus
Oh! Indeed, I surely will!
#20 They must have spoken highly of Sheldon Cooper!
Tesla was a brilliant fellow all right. Very creative, very strange and riddled with OCD.
In his day he was the worlds smartest crackpot... and I don’t mean that as a put-down.
His discovery of the AC motor had the mark of true genius. A simple idea that no one else seemed to be able to think of.
Someone suggested his name before when I was trying to guess who he said..
I just don’t know.
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