| IQ | Historian | IQ citations | Description | |
| 1. |  — 20 |  Henry Adams (1838-1918) Collected works: 12+ |  [RGM:811|1,310+] (SN:2) (CR:241)Spent over five decades attempting to explain history according to physical principals, physico-chemical principles generally; in his 9-volume History of United States America (1891), covering the years during the Jefferson administration (1801-1817), was penned with the sole intention to demonstrate causality in the course of human history, or as Adams would latter summarize “to satisfy himself whether, by severest process of stating, with the least possible comment, such facts as seemed sure, in such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he could fix for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human movement”; his The Tendency of History (1896), attempted to describe history according to the second law of thermodynamics, albeit of the form of William Thomson's 1852 paper "On a Universal Tendency to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy"; his The Rule of Phase Applied to History (1909) was reviewed by physicist Henry Bumstead, one of the few and only students of Willard Gibbs, the inventor of the phase rule; his A Letter to American Teachers of History (1910) gave sound advice for future generations of historians to start looking back at history scientifically, the way scientists look at reaction patterns between molecules, to view people as human molecules, and historical progress as governed by the laws of thermodynamics, just as is the historical progress of the universe. | |
| 2. |  — 170 |  Edward Gibbon(1737-1794) |  =180 |  (Cattell 1000:60) [RGM:495|1,400+] (Murray 4000:N/A) [HD:12] (FA:76) (GHE:2) (CR:18) English historian; noted for his six-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, peer reviewed by David Hume (1776), wherein he openly criticized organized religion, telling the story of the rise and fall of Roman, without the intervention of god, as was previously the standing historical modus operandi, but instead from the point of view of Rome’s decline as due the “disease of Christianity” spreading through the Roman empire and rotting it. |
| 3. |  — 213 |  Henry Buckle (1821-1862) |  (Library:21,000) (CR:34) English social physics themed historian;“The actions of men are in reality never inconsistent, but however capricious they may appear only form part of one vast system of universal order.” — Henry Buckle (1861), History of Civilization in England In his 3-volume History of Civilization in England, which was immediately praised by Maxwell and Boltzmann, he focused on solving the question of whether the actions of people operate by (a) fixed laws, (b) chance, or (c) supernatural interference, via physical science means, i.e. strong positivism. | |
| 4. | — 249 |  Herodotus (484-425BC) | (Cattell 1000:202) [RGM:171|1,500+] (CR:51) was a Greek historian, aka “father of history” (Cicero, 50BC), noted for his digression on a number of thinkers, e.g. Thales, and topics, e.g. his use of the term “phoenix” for Ra, of Heliopolis creation myth, connection of Osiris with Dionysus (see: Osiris, Dionysus, and Bacchus), mummification, the Egyptian pig superstition behind Mark 5:1-17, among others | |
| 5. |  — 349 |  Oswald Spengler(1880-1936) |  =170 | (RGM:245|1,500+) (CR:15) was a German philosopher of history; “Today we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.” — Ostwald Spengler (1923), The Decline of the West, Volume Two (pg. 461) His two-volume The Decline of the West (1922), wherein he outlines a Goethean-Nietzschean view of rise and falls of civilization, intermixed, supposedly, with entropy discussion. |
| 6. |  — 527 |  Bede(672-735) | (Cattell 1000:878) [RGM:615|1,500+] (CR:15) English historian and monk; noted for being one of the first to connect John the Baptist with the Aquarius constellation; recounted the “warm sparrow” anecdote Christianity adoption in England; his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (1731) gained him the epitaph as the “father of English history”. | |
| 7. | — 569 |  Thucydides (460-395BC) | (Cattell 1000:72) [RGM:175|1,500+] (FA:14) (CR:3) Greek historian and general; “Modern criticism rightly regards Thucydides as the model of the rational and objective historian who made it his first duty to leave the finger of god out of history and to tidy up the mundane events of the human drama. The contrast between his work with respect to the gods and the histories of his predecessor Herodotus and his successor Xenophon is plain; it is a contrast so great, in fact, as to provoke the observation from some (e.g. K. J. Dover) that Thucydides may well have been an atheist.” — Borimir Jordan (1986), “Religion in Thucydides” noted for his participation in and later secular recounting of the Peloponnesian War (431-404BC), wherein the Athenians battled the Spartans; considered, by some (Ѻ), to be the father of “scientific history”, i.e. history based on evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect. | |
| 8. |  — 611 |  Livy(59BC-17AD) | (Cattell 1000:119) [RGM:N/A|1,310+] (Murray 4000:N/A) Roman historian; noted for his History of Rome (9BC), wherein he discusses the Mucius Scaevola hand burning legend (famously tested by Jean Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche in youth); Thomas Jefferson, in his recommended education letter to his nephew Peter Carr, says that one should read the Bible as one “would read Livy or Tacitus”; read by John Mill (Ѻ) between ate 8 and 12; cited in the silent historians problem | |
| 9. |  Tacitus(58-120AD) | (Cattell 1000:294) (CR:11) Roman senator, public official, historian of the Roman Empire, who is noted as someone oft-cited having referred to the punishment of "Christians" by Nero and the execution of their founder "Christus" by Pontius Pilate; considered by Thomas Jefferson to be a good historian to read | ||
| 10. | — 614 |  Josephus (c.37-100AD) | (Cattell 1000: 645) (CR:7) Roman-Jewish historian, scholar, and hagiographer, oft-cited in the silent historians problem on whether or not he refers to a "Jesus" as the "Christ", a detail that was “unknown” to Origen (c.230AD), who had copies of his works; he also conjectured that the Jewish exodus was based on the 1300BC expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt | |
| 11. |  Manetho (c.300-250BC) | Egyptian historian and priest, centered in Heliopolis, noted for his History of Egypt, written, in Greek, for Ptolemy II (reign: 283-246BC), based on materials collected in the library of the priesthood of Ra; his division of the rulers of ancient Egypt into 30 dynasties is still used as the basic framework for ancient Egyptian history. (Ѻ) |
