A 2005 printing of US postage stamps in honor of American scientific genius: showing Americans: Barbara McClintock, Willard Gibbs, Richard Feynman, and Hungarian-born American John Neumann (who came to America at age 26). |
See main: Genius epochsThe following is a work-in-progress ranking of American geniuses, as subset of the top 1000 geniuses, in short:
Person | IQ Estimates | Description | |
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1 — [5] | (1839-1903) | “Gibbs is the greatest mind in American history.” — Albert Einstein (c.1925) “In the last generation, this country produced one of the most eminent men of science in the whole world. His name was quite unknown among us while he lived, and it is still unknown. Yet I may say without too great exaggeration that when I heard it mentioned in a professional assembly in the Netherlands two years ago, everybody got down under the table and touched their foreheads to the floor. His name was Josiah Willard Gibbs”. — Albert Nock (1931) Central founder of chemical thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, vector analysis; quote: “[untold number of] Nobel Prizing-winning careers [have been] launched from a passing remark or footnote in Gibbs’ monumental masterpiece [Equilibrium, 1876]” (Frank Weinhold, 2009); his 700-equation Equilibrium is the most-complex, dense, and treasure-filled scientific treatise ever published—the key to the elective affinities problem (see: affinity-free energy equation)—the greatest of all genius puzzles—that was described by John Strutt (IQ:190|#42), official solver of the two-century long blue sky problem, as being “too difficult and too condensed for most, I might say all, readers”—James Maxwell (IQ:210|#4), in fact, was the only one, of the 300 scientists Gibbs mailed it to, that immediately understood it (see: thermodynamic surface and Maxwell’s thermodynamic surface); first-slating: 195-220 (c.2013). | |
2 — [13] | (1875-1946) | ||
3 — [21] | (1838-1918) Collected works: 12+ | “No one shall convince me that I am not a phase.” penned nine-volume American history set solely to prove cause and effect; his The Education of Henry Adams (1907), which is ranked as the greatest American nonfiction book of the twentieth century (American Library), grapples with: Goethe, Gibbs, Clausius, Thomson, Pearson, Darwin, among others, in search of a unified theory of the humanities and physical sciences; prophet of the "another Newton"; biggest hmolscience thinker since Goethe; spent five decades on the social-history aspects of the elective affinities problem; quote: “social chemistry—the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules—is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life” (1885); quote: "I would travel a few thousand-million miles to discuss with [Thomson] the thermodynamics of socialistic society” (1909); probably the first true hmolscientist (human chemist + human thermodynamicist + human physicist); known to many as an enigmatic genius of political thought; first-slating: 185-195 (c.2016). | |
4 — [37] | (1743-1826) Library: 6,700+ (Ѻ) | ||
5 — [38] | (1901-1994) | ||
6 — [49] | (1918-1988) | ||
7 — [54] | (1882-1961) ↑ | ||
8 — [58] | (1847-1931) | ||
9 — [62] | (1907-1984) | ||
10 — [105] | (1878-1942) | ||
11 — [130] | (1908-1991) | [RGM:N/A|1,330+] (EPD genius) (CR:7) American physicist and electrical engineer; noted as dual Nobel laureate ( | |
12 — [138] | (1899-1990) | ||
13 — [148] | (1751-1836) | (Cattell 1000:476) [RGM:177|1,305+] American political leader; one of the chiefs of Princeton School of Social Physics; used Newtonian government in the construction of the US Constitution, such as the principle of separation of powers, as found in celestial mechanics. | |
13 — [158] | (1915-2000) | (SN:13) American chemist, mathematician, and statistician; noted for his 1966 free energy theory of attitude state changes, based on the theory of absolute reaction rates in chemistry; first-slating: 180|#158 (see: IQ:200+ HCT prodigies) (c.2016). | |
14 — [178] | (1928-2015) | [RGM:325|1,245+] (CR:23) American economist; described, at age 20, as “a genius” in his letter of recommendation by Carnegie Tech professor R.L. Duffin; Based his 1949 “Nash equilibrium”, and supposedly game theory, supposedly, on the statistical interactions of reacting molecules from his studies of chemical engineering and chemistry at Carnegie Tech; some rank Nash at the IQ=200+ level and compare his genius to that of Nikola Tesla or John Neumann (Ѻ); famously known for his mixture of genius and madness (e.g. A Beautiful Mind, 2001); a Discovery.com top 5 mad genius (Ѻ); (V) Quote: “It is believed that mathematician John Forbes Nash had an IQ around 180” (Jennifer Evans, 2010). (Ѻ) | |
15 — [197] | (1916-2001) | [RGM:N/A|1,330+] (Murray 4000:N/A) American electrical engineer; noted for his age 21 penned 1937 MS thesis “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits” (Ѻ) mapped Boolean algebra into circuit language; he later went on to invent information theory; guestimated IQ (2012) of 180± (Ѻ); forum (2017) cited IQ (Ѻ) at 180. | |
16 — [208] | (1809-1865) | (Cattell 1000:40) [RGM:49|1,320+] (Murray 4000:N/A) American president [See: American Presidents by IQ]; “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.” — Abraham Lincoln (1838), Speech, Jan 27 (Ѻ) noted for his Emancipation Proclamation (1863) which ended slavery and brought a close to the civil war; made decisions using Euclidian logic. | |
17 — [210] | (1706-1790) | ||
18 — [220] | (1809-1849) | [RGM:55|1,330+] [GLA:14] American writer, editor, and literary critic; best-known for his poem “The Raven” (1845) noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere, which tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness, as he is lamenting the loss of his love; sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore"; The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references; Yahoo Answers IQ estimated (Ѻ) at 145; his interpolated IQ per GLA position is 170 to 180; his comments on Margaret Fuller (IQ:#|#), madness and intelligence (similar to Aristotle), and true genius, would seem to align him higher ↑ in rankings; position 175|#190 guestimate (Jun 2017). | |
19 — [246] | (1735-1826) | [RGM:188|1,250+] (HD:14) (Cattell 1000:182) (founding father:3) (American President:2) was an American politician and thinker; patriarch of the so-called Adams family (or Adams political family): his son, John Quincy Adams, was 6th president, and his great grandson was Henry Adams, the leading social Newton, behind Goethe. |
“We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects. Yet, how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny our doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation. Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis?”— John Adams (1825), “Letter to Thomas Jefferson”, Jan 23
“I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.”— Margaret Fuller (c.1840), publication (Ѻ)
“There is one spot in America, which I would like to visit, viz the long-neglected spot in Baltimore where the greatest American genius lies buried. In my opinion your Bryant, Whittier, etc., are pygmies compared with Poe. He is the literary glory of America. More than thirty-five years have elapsed since his death, and his fame is constantly increasing. That is a true test of genius.”— Alfred Tennyson (1885) (Ѻ)
“The greatest American genius of that day was the oldest man in the convention [Philadelphia, May, 1787], Benjamin Franklin, aged eighty-one. Of him and of George Washington nothing need be said, as every schoolboy knows their history.”— Henry Elson (1900), Side Lights on American History (pg. 33)
“Gibbs is the greatest mind in American history.”— Albert Einstein (c.1925), Source; cited by William Phelps (1939), in Autobiography (pg. 425)
“Who is the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced? The answer ‘Charles Peirce’ is uncontested, because any second would be so far behind as not to be worth nominating. Mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, spectroscopist, engineer, inventor; psychologist, philologist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist, lifelong student of medicine; book reviewer, dramatist, actor, short-story writer; phenomenologist, semiotician, logician, rhetorician [and] metaphysician.”— Max Fisch (1981), Publication [1]