Top 100 Living Geniuses 2008

The years seem shorter with every one that passes. Again, The Daily Telegraph in the UK has published a list of the top 100 living geniuses. This list was compiled by Creators Synectics, a global consulting firm. To do so, they mailed 4,000 Britons and asked them to nominate up to 10 geniuses each.

The geniuses are ranked on the basis of their aggregate scores in five characteristics: paradigm shifting; popular acclaim; intellectual power; achievement and cultural importance. They were scored out of 10 in each criteria and their scores totalled. It is interesting to note that, although the highest possible score was 50, that the number one ranking was achieved with a score of only 27. This implies that to be the best living genius, one only needs to score half marks, in this assessment. There is, therefore, a lot of room for a "super genius", at the top - though such a person has yet to be identified. It would be interesting to compare these living geniuses with their dead rivals. I rather think that the dead ones would fare better, in many cases.

As with the first such list, last year, I am surprised at what people understand a genius to be. Some of those included in this popular list do not remotely meet the criteria of genius. JK Rowling, for instance, is a popular writer, but she doesn't produce original works - her work has been frequently criticized for being highly derivative. Thus, no matter how many books she sells, she can never cross the threshold into "genius" until she starts writing works that owe something to true creativity and less to imitation. Others who are most certainly not true geniuses include Damian Hirst, who also suffers from a chronic case of plagiarism. Many of Hirst's works are direct copies of other people's ideas and this has been frequently been brought out by the public complaints of his victims. Sadly, though, less coverage has been given to his complainants, than to his own self-promotion - hence the myth persists that this man is a "creative genius".

Astonishingly, Dolly Parton is accounted a genius by the voters. I find this puzzling since it is not her big brain that she is famous for. It seems that those who vote on this list, are unable to distinguish between "talent" and genius. Parton is a talented singer...but is she truly a genius in the actual sense of the word?

Other miscategorizations are understandable. For instance, Daniel Tammet is listed as a genius...whereas, in fact, he is a savant (which though impressive in some ways, does not qualify him as a genius).

It is interesting to note that some makers of our age are included. Their claim to genius seems more certain in that their works have changed the world. These include Tim Berners-Lee, the "inventor of the internet", Larry Page and Sergey Brin, of Google fame and Steve Wozniak of Apple Computers. These people are each, essentially, noted for one major contribution, a work significant enough in itself to qualify them as "geniuses". I do note, however, that in classical times, geniuses were generally thought to be more abundantly productive than this.

In a way, what this list does is identify what is important to people, more than it identifies true genius. They label as "genius" that which has significance for them, in their lives - even if this is just a gifted boxer, Muhammad Ali, or a singer, like Dolly Parton. (These are both examples of talents, not genius, really.)

The true test of genius, of course, is the passage of time. How many of these "geniuses" on this list will be remembered, referred to and thought of in, say, five hundred years time? Unchallengeable geniuses are those like Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart, Plato, Socrates and Aristotle that are still remembered centuries or even civilizations after their passing. Whom do you think, on this list, will be remembered on the same timescale as the great names I have just mentioned? Will any of them be so revered? Please comment with your views, below, if you have any. Thanks.


1= Albert Hoffman (Swiss) Chemist 27
1= Tim Berners-Lee (British) Computer Scientist 27
3 George Soros (American) Investor & Philanthropist 25
4 Matt Groening (American) Satirist & Animator 24
5= Nelson Mandela (South African) Politician & Diplomat 23
5= Frederick Sanger (British) Chemist 23
7= Dario Fo (Italian) Writer & Dramatist 22
7= Steven Hawking (British) Physicist 22
9= Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian) Architect 21
9= Philip Glass (American) Composer 21
9= Grigory Perelman (Russian) Mathematician 21
12= Andrew Wiles (British) Mathematician 20
12= Li Hongzhi (Chinese) Spiritual Leader 20
12= Ali Javan (Iranian) Engineer 20
15= Brian Eno (British) Composer 19
15= Damian Hirst (British) Artist 19
15= Daniel Tammet (British) Savant & Linguist 19
18 Nicholson Baker (American Writer) 18
19 Daniel Barenboim (N/A) Musician 17
20= Robert Crumb (American) Artist 16
20= Richard Dawkins (British) Biologist and philosopher 16
20= Larry Page & Sergey Brin (American) Publishers 16
20= Rupert Murdoch (American) Publisher 16
20= Geoffrey Hill (British) Poet 16
25 Garry Kasparov (Russian) Chess Player 15
26= The Dalai Lama (Tibetan) Spiritual Leader 14
26= Steven Spielberg (American) Film maker 14
26= Hiroshi Ishiguro (Japanese) Roboticist 14
26= Robert Edwards (British) Pioneer of IVF treatment 14
26= Seamus Heaney (Irish) Poet 14
31 Harold Pinter (British) Writer & Dramatist 13
32= Flossie Wong-Staal (Chinese) Bio-technologist 12
32= Bobby Fischer (American) Chess Player 12
32= Prince (American) Musician 12
32= Henrik Gorecki (Polish) Composer 12
32= Avram Noam Chomski (American) Philosopher & linguist 12
32= Sebastian Thrun (German) Probabilistic roboticist 12
32= Nima Arkani Hamed (Canadian) Physicist 12
32= Margaret Turnbull (American) Astrobiologist 12
40= Elaine Pagels (American) Historian 11
40= Enrique Ostrea (Philippino) Pediatrics & neonatology 11
40= Gary Becker (American) Economist 11
43= Mohammed Ali (American) Boxer 10
43= Osama Bin Laden (Saudi) Islamicist 10
43= Bill Gates (American) Businessman 10
43= Philip Roth (American) Writer 10
43= James West (American) Invented the foil electrical microphone 10
43= Tuan Vo-Dinh (Vietnamese) Bio-Medical Scientist 10
49= Brian Wilson (American) Musician 9
49= Stevie Wonder (American) Singer songwriter 9
49= Vint Cerf (American) Computer scientist 9
49= Henry Kissinger (American) Diplomat and politician 9
49= Richard Branson (British) Publicist 9
49= Pardis Sabeti (Iranian) Biological anthropologist 9
49= Jon de Mol (Dutch) Television producer 9
49= Meryl Streep (American) Actress 9
49= Margaret Attwood (Canadian) Writer 9
58= Placido Domingo (Spanish) Singer 8
58= John Lasseter (American) Digital Animator 8
58= Shunpei Yamazaki (Japanese) Computer scientist & physicist 8
58= Jane Goodall (British) Ethologist & Anthropologist 8
58= Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri (Indian) Historian 8
58= John Goto (British) Photographer 8
58= Paul McCartney (British) Musician 8
58= Stephen King (American) Writer 8
58= Leonard Cohen (American) Poet & musician 8
67= Aretha Franklin (American) Musician 7
67= David Bowie (British) Musician 7
67= Emily Oster (American) Economist 7
67= Steve Wozniak (American) Engineer and co-founder of Apple Computers 7
67= Martin Cooper (American) Inventor of the cell phone 7
72= George Lucas (American) Film maker 6
72= Niles Rogers (American) Musician 6
72= Hans Zimmer (German) Composer 6
72= John Williams (American) Composer 6
72= Annette Baier (New Zealander) Philosopher 6
72= Dorothy Rowe (British) Psychologist 6
72= Ivan Marchuk (Ukrainian) Artist & sculptor 6
72= Robin Escovado (American) Composer 6
72= Mark Dean (American) Inventor & computer scientist 6
72= Rick Rubin (American) Musician & producer 6
72= Stan Lee (American) Publisher 6
83= David Warren (Australian) Engineer 5
83= Jon Fosse (Norwegian) Writer & dramatist
83= Gjertrud Schnackenberg (American) Poet 5
83= Graham Linehan (Irish) Writer & dramatist 5
83= JK Rowling (British) Writer5
83= Ken Russell (British) Film maker 5
83= Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (Russian) Small arms designer 5
83= Erich Jarvis (American) Neurobiologist 5
91=. Chad Varah (British) Founder of Samaritans 4
91= Nicolas Hayek (Swiss) Businessman and founder of Swatch 4
91= Alastair Hannay (British) Philosopher 4
94= Patricia Bath (American) Ophthalmologist
94= Thomas A. Jackson (American) Aerospace engineer 3
94= Dolly Parton (American) Singer 3
94= Morissey (British) Singer 3
94= Michael Eavis (British) Organiser of Glastonbury 3
94= Ranulph Fiennes (British) Adventurer 3
100=. Quentin Tarantino (American) Filmmaker 2

Albert Hofmann, Chemist, dead at 102.

Only a few days ago, I posted a list of the world's top 100 living geniuses. In no. 1 position was Albert Hofmann. He died of a heart attack on April 29, 2008. He is the second on the list to die, since it was published towards the end of last year.

Albert Hofmann is best known for his discovery of LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide. He was also the first human to try its effects, when he accidentally came into contact with some. He wrote of the hallucinogenic experience and came to believe that his discovery would have therapeutic effects. He managed to persuade some in the medical community of this and, for a time, there was some experimental use of it. It was not long before its use was hijacked by the likes of Timothy Leary and promoted for ends that Hofmann would not have agreed with. This, of course, led to the banning of his creation - much to the regret of Hofmann, who still believed that it had potential to aid mankind.

As is often the way of people who make an iconic discovery, the rest of their life's work tends to get overshadowed. Hofmann made many chemical contributions. He published over a 100 articles and several books, including one on LSD: My Problem Child. His discoveries included revealing the structure of chitin, as a graduate student and a large number of ergot derived drugs (of which LSD was one). These included methergine, used to prevent obstetrical bleeding; dihydergot for migraines and hydergine, an anti-dementia vasodilator.

He was born in Baden, Switzerland. He studied Chemistry at the University of Zurich and became Director of Sandoz's natural products division. It is from there that he made his seminal discoveries.

Albert Hofmann's life is an example of how one chemist can change the world. Whether you agree with the changes that resulted from his work, or not, it is clear that one man, even so late in the scientific day as this, can change the lives of millions through his work. LSD changed how many people see the world. Hydergine changed the course of dementia for millions of patients. Methergine spared a lot of mothers from untoward consequences of birth. Many millions more found relief from their headaches with dihydergot. Perhaps none of these drugs would have been, were it not for Hofmann living and working as he did.

I do not know why he was voted the no.1 living genius by so many people - but that he was a gifted chemist is clear. He died in a village in Switzerland, where he had spent his life. Rest in Peace, Albert Hofmann.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-seven months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind, niño, gênio criança, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The top 100 living geniuses

Who are the greatest living geniuses of today? Creators Synectics asked and answered this question. They did so by asking 4,000 Britons to list up to 10 living people they considered geniuses. They received just 1,100 nominations in reply (which would seem to suggest that many Britons are not interested enough in genius to answer a question about them). Only 60 per cent of these nominees were actually alive at the time - the dead ones being discounted owing to their poor health.

Now, I would like you to guess (without looking at the list below to cheat), which country had the most geniuses per head of population, on Earth (according to this survey)?

The answer was Britain. One Briton out of every 2.5 million is considered a living genius, by the respondents. For America, only one in every 6.9 million Americans was considered a genius.

If this survey is accurate, it would seem to suggest that something in the British culture and education system is more conducive to giving rise to genius than the American system. It may be, for instance, that the American system is insufficiently intellectually challenging in High School (and perhaps at Bachelor's degree level) to bring out the best in its students. Whatever the reason, it is something to be concerned about, for it suggests that America's intellectual pre-eminence in the world is not to be an enduring one. To make the comparison more clear, if these proportions for genius hold true, then Britain has 23 living geniuses and America, just 43. Thus, though America is far vaster in size, it does not have a comparable intellectual weight.

One reason for this could be that the people asked for their opinion were Britons. That might hold true in a world where information was not transmitted so readily. In the modern world, fame extends around the world. American geniuses are just as familiar to Britons as British ones - so too the geniuses from elsewhere in the world. So, I doubt that that is the explanation. The Britons would know of American geniuses (and those from elsewhere) and would therefore be able to vote for them.

Nor can we say that they were excluding Americans in preference for Britons, because they had up to 10 votes each: there was room for many a nationality there.

We have to consider, therefore, that this is a real difference and that American ingenuity is not, comparatively, what one would have thought. Perhaps they need to become more attractive to British immigrants.

A note: when this list was compiled, Bobby Fischer was still alive.

Other curiosities: J K Rowling is on the list. I am not sure that she is really a genius, for her work does appear to be rather derivative - yet she got the popular vote. Damien Hirst, too, has often been accused of plagiarism, by other artists - so his place, too, is questionable.

The funniest thing about the list is Richard Branson's description as a "publicist". In a way, that is exactly what he is, for he has built his Virgin empire on generating media coverage for himself.

The numbers after each listing are the score for the genius in terms of five factors that were used to rank them. The factors are: paradigm shifting; popular acclaim; intellectual power; achievement and cultural importance. It is notable that some geniuses secured a very low score. This means that though they were voted in by the people, the judges did not think them to have great power as geniuses. Quentin Tarantino best exemplifies this, on the bottom of the list with a score of 2. He, too, is known to be derivative in the extreme (a big chunk of Reservoir Dogs echoes Ringo Lam's City of Fire, very closely). Again, therefore, he shouldn't really be on the list at all.

Interestingly, the joint first place goes to two scientists: Albert Hoffman, the chemist who invented LSD - and Tim Berners-Lee who invented that other hallucinogenic distraction, the world wide web.

Please take a look at this list and give me your views, if you wish, as to whether these people should be on it, in the first place. Are they geniuses? Are they good enough to be in the top 100? Who is NOT on the list that you think should be? Is Britain truly producing more geniuses than any other country on Earth, per head of population?

I originally encountered this list on the Daily Telegraph website, from the UK.



1= Albert Hoffman (Swiss) Chemist 27
1= Tim Berners-Lee (British) Computer Scientist 27
3 George Soros (American) Investor & Philanthropist 25
4 Matt Groening (American) Satirist & Animator 24
5= Nelson Mandela (South African) Politician & Diplomat 23
5= Frederick Sanger (British) Chemist 23
7= Dario Fo (Italian) Writer & Dramatist 22
7= Steven Hawking (British) Physicist 22
9= Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian) Architect 21
9= Philip Glass (American) Composer 21
9= Grigory Perelman (Russian) Mathematician 21
12= Andrew Wiles (British) Mathematician 20
12= Li Hongzhi (Chinese) Spiritual Leader 20
12= Ali Javan (Iranian) Engineer 20
15= Brian Eno (British) Composer 19
15= Damien Hirst (British) Artist 19
15= Daniel Tammet (British) Savant & Linguist 19
18 Nicholson Baker (American) Writer 18
19 Daniel Barenboim (N/A) Musician 17
20= Robert Crumb (American) Artist 16
20= Richard Dawkins (British) Biologist and philosopher 16
20= Larry Page & Sergey Brin (American) Publishers 16
20= Rupert Murdoch (American) Publisher 16
20= Geoffrey Hill (British) Poet 16
25 Garry Kasparov (Russian) Chess Player 15
26= The Dalai Lama (Tibetan) Spiritual Leader 14
26= Steven Spielberg (American) Film maker 14
26= Hiroshi Ishiguro (Japanese) Roboticist 14
26= Robert Edwards (British) Pioneer of IVF treatment 14
26= Seamus Heaney (Irish) Poet 14
31 Harold Pinter (British) Writer & Dramatist 13
32= Flossie Wong-Staal (Chinese) Bio-technologist 12
32= Bobby Fischer (American) Chess Player 12
32= Prince (American) Musician 12
32= Henrik Gorecki (Polish) Composer 12
32= Avram Noam Chomski (American) Philosopher & linguist 12
32= Sebastian Thrun (German) Probabilistic roboticist 12
32= Nima Arkani Hamed (Canadian) Physicist 12
32= Margaret Turnbull (American) Astrobiologist 12
40= Elaine Pagels (American) Historian 11
40= Enrique Ostrea (Philippino) Pediatrics & neonatology 11
40= Gary Becker (American) Economist 11
43= Mohammed Ali (American) Boxer 10
43= Osama Bin Laden (Saudi) Islamicist 10
43= Bill Gates (American) Businessman 10
43= Philip Roth (American) Writer 10
43= James West (American) Invented the foil electrical microphone 10
43= Tuan Vo-Dinh (Vietnamese) Bio-Medical Scientist 10
49= Brian Wilson (American) Musician 9
49= Stevie Wonder (American) Singer songwriter 9
49= Vint Cerf (American) Computer scientist 9
49= Henry Kissinger (American) Diplomat and politician 9
49= Richard Branson (British) Publicist 9
49= Pardis Sabeti (Iranian) Biological anthropologist 9
49= Jon de Mol (Dutch) Television producer 9
49= Meryl Streep (American) Actress 9
49= Margaret Attwood (Canadian) Writer 9
58= Placido Domingo (Spanish) Singer 8
58= John Lasseter (American) Digital Animator 8
58= Shunpei Yamazaki (Japanese) Computer scientist & physicist 8
58= Jane Goodall (British) Ethologist & Anthropologist 8
58= Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri (Indian) Historian 8
58= John Goto (British) Photographer 8
58= Paul McCartney (British) Musician 8
58= Stephen King (American) Writer 8
58= Leonard Cohen (American) Poet & musician 8
67= Aretha Franklin (American) Musician 7
67= David Bowie (British) Musician 7
67= Emily Oster (American) Economist 7
67= Steve Wozniak (American) Engineer and co-founder of Apple Computers 7
67= Martin Cooper (American) Inventor of the cell phone 7
72= George Lucas (American) Film maker 6
72= Niles Rogers (American) Musician 6
72= Hans Zimmer (German) Composer 6
72= John Williams (American) Composer 6
72= Annette Baier (New Zealander) Philosopher 6
72= Dorothy Rowe (British) Psychologist 6
72= Ivan Marchuk (Ukrainian) Artist & sculptor 6
72= Robin Escovado (American) Composer 6
72= Mark Dean (American) Inventor & computer scientist 6
72= Rick Rubin (American) Musician & producer 6
72= Stan Lee (American) Publisher 6
83= David Warren (Australian) Engineer 5
83= Jon Fosse (Norwegian) Writer & dramatist
83= Gjertrud Schnackenberg (American) Poet 5
83= Graham Linehan (Irish) Writer & dramatist 5
83= JK Rowling (British) Writer 5
83= Ken Russell (British) Film maker 5
83= Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (Russian) Small arms designer 5
83= Erich Jarvis (American) Neurobiologist 5
91=. Chad Varah (British) Founder of Samaritans 4
91= Nicolas Hayek (Swiss) Businessman and founder of Swatch 4
91= Alastair Hannay (British) Philosopher 4
94= Patricia Bath (American) Ophthalmologist
94= Thomas A. Jackson (American) Aerospace engineer 3
94= Dolly Parton (American) Singer 3
94= Morissey (British) Singer 3
94= Michael Eavis (British) Organiser of Glastonbury 3
94= Ranulph Fiennes (British) Adventurer 3
100=. Quentin Tarantino (American) Filmmaker 2

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and four months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and nine months, and Tiarnan, twenty-six months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind, niño, gênio criança, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)