A reader recently asked me to estimate the IQ of Bertrand Russell. This reader is probably extremely smart: The fact that he’s interested in IQ at all is one sign of intelligence, but the fact that he inquired about Bertrand Russell (as opposed to some pop culture celeb or politician) is another sign.
The two most salient facts about Bertrand Russell is that he was an incredibly eminent intellectual; journalist Daniel Seligman described him as arguably the most intelligent man of the 20th century, and yet he couldn’t lean to make a cup of tea, despite his wife leaving him detailed instructions. He also couldn’t make his hearing aid work.
To get a sense of Russell’s IQ, we begin by noting that roughly the year Russell won his Nobel prize, the average IQ of the 64 eminent scientists in the Roe study was about 155. The dumbest of these eminent scientists had an IQ around 120, 35 points below the mean of the whole group. But I bet even he or she could learn to make tea.
In low complexity jobs (i.e. making tea in a restaurant), the correlation between IQ and job performance is about 0.23. So even though Russell was likely dumber than all of Roe’s elite scientists at learning to make tea, his actual IQ was probably only 23% as low as the dumbest Roe scientist.
So since the dumbest Roe scientist was 35 points dumber than the average elite scientist of that time, Russell was probably 0.23(35) = 8 points dumber than the average Roe scientist.
If the average Roe scientist had an IQ of 155, Russell likely had an IQ of 155 – 8 = 147.
An IQ of 147 implies that only one in a thousand whites of Russell’s era were as smart or smarter than him.
Pumpkin Person 
You seem to be reaching here…
I have a personal story about being fired from a retail job in college for screwing up a cash register (more to the story than that but I don’t feel like getting into it here). If you estimated my IQ based on that, you’d have to assume I’m stupid, given that most of the people who worked there had never even attended college and did just fine…even assuming the low correlation between IQ and success in menial work.
I’m not really sure whether or not Bertrand Russell really could not make tea (it seems strange that a literate person, let alone a genius, couldn’t; it doesn’t require any particular specialized motor skills or procedural memory). I’m willing to bet it’s an urban legend.
But assuming he couldn’t, there’s plenty of explanations for it. Maybe he had poor attention/concentration on things not related to philosophy and mathematics. Maybe he was so used to have people do stuff for him that he couldn’t do even menial tasks himself. Maybe he would’ve made the best tea in the world with minimal training.
I have a personal story about being fired from a retail job in college for screwing up a cash register (more to the story than that but I don’t feel like getting into it here). If you estimated my IQ based on that, you’d have to assume I’m stupid, given that most of the people who worked there had never even attended college and did just fine…even assuming the low correlation between IQ and success in menial work.
But notice I didn’t assume Russell was stupid, I assumed he was 8 points dumber than other super elite academics of his time, not 8 points dumber than the general population. I ended up with an IQ that was still higher than over 99.9% of whites of his day.
Now an analogous analysis with you might claim your problems using a cash register makes you 8 points dumber than other National Merit Scholars (since that’s the most salient group you belong to).
National Merit scholars seem to average IQs on the SAT that are 44 points higher than the U.S. mean of 96. Since the SAT correlates about 0.7 with the WAIS, they’d probably average 0.7(44) = 31 points above the U.S. mean of 96, thus an IQ of 127.
So your estimated IQ equivalent on the WAIS-IV would be 127 – 8 = 119, which is similar to how you actually scored.
Wait…did I say I was National Merit Scholar over at Gregory Cochran’s? I wasn’t, I was only National Merit Finalist, which is different. Both Finalists and Scholars have to achieve the same PSAT cutoff but the Scholars are determined by additional essays and teacher recommendations. I never attained the latter achievement. I’d guess the Finalists on average have slightly lower IQs than the Scholars (who make up about half of all Finalists), but my score was way higher than the cutoff score in most states (it was 220). I think I should’ve been a Scholar.
Of course, I reached Scholar level in the National Achievement competition, but that’s much easier because it’s for blacks (I think the cutoff is only 190 or so in most states).
I don’t think his inability to make tea was an urban legend. It was reported in Daniel Seligman’s book A Question of Intelligence and Seligman was citing Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals
Russell had a high IQ, he is supposed to have been disappointed upon arriving at Cambridge to find no one intelligent.
However, I read the other day that Russell’s conversations with Keynes left him drained and he implied that Keynes was a much greater intellect.
I would say Russell 170, Keynes 180.
Russell was very, very bright and Keynes was subject defining – although he is currently out of fashion (for about 35 years!)
Why such incredibly high estimates? I realize both men are extremely intellectually accomplished, but the correlation between IQ and accomplishments of any kind is far from perfect.
“I would say Russell 170, Keynes 180”
LOL.
https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/06/08/the-highest-iq-in-each-race/
read this and you will see that its impossible. (you can also figure out that it is impossible by simply use your brain)
I remember Russell’s comment after speaking for a while with Keynes as implying just the opposite. Russell seemed to think Keynes a bit “dumb” compared to himself but couldn’t actually catch him up in any misstatements. Russell, IMO, was way smarter than one out of a thousand. I’d guess between one out of 100,000 – 1,000,000. What would that make his IQ range?
Between 164 and 172.
People who are creatively sterile love to talk about their scholastic achievements.
he seems to have a really small head. And he had a really good education at his aristocratic home.
He died at the age of 97. I read somewhere that the standard deviation for life expectancy is about 15. And in 1900s life expectancy in UK was about 50, when Russell was 30 years old. I do not know how to work this out though…
Well head size and IQ are both weakly correlated with IQ (0.2-0.23). In his case they probably mostly cancel each other out.
A small head combined with a long life puts one
especially at risk for dementia. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t make tea
There was a documentary about teens that attend IMO (international math olympiad). It was about the UK team and in that team there was a very particular boy who could not make tea(or coffee) either, although his mom was trying to teach him. The famous Aspergers scientist from UK said that he has aspergers. The symptoms of aspergers are very similar to high IQ, and I think it is very difficult to distinguish.
The documentry is very interesting:
Well both high IQ & autism/aspergers seem positively correlated with nerdiness (K genotype) but my theory is that the difference is aspergers people are impaired in executive function
Analogously, both low IQ and schizophrenia seem negatively correlated with nerdiness, but the difference is schizophrenics, like autistics, are impaired on executive function
Thus autism and schizophrenia are at opposite ends of the r/K spectrum but are both at the bottom of executive function scale, which is why they are genetically correlated within races but negatively correlated between races
Just speculation on my part; could be wrong
Yep, ‘ aspergers’ have a smart personality, i.e, they have intelectual intrinsical motivation, if personality = intrinsical or bio-direct motivation.
. Paul Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians ever, also had trouble with routine tasks.
PP, you might like hearing that Russell said that the most important thing was to know what you don’t know. Sure, others have said this, but this jives with what you said about the ability to ask questions being central to intelligence. Probably a lot of the questions BR asked, his peers wouldn’t have even thought to ask. Because they weren’t smart enough!
I’ve noticed this a lot about really smart people. They ask questions I wouldn’t even think to ask.
Yes, I’ve seen that too. And it’s not just about being curious. Their curiosity is focused in the form of probing questions. Unfortunately, with Russell, he couldn’t get his hearing aid to work, so he couldn’t hear the answers to all those questions he asked. Sorry, bad joke.
All autism spectrum is derived from savant syndrome. 10% of autistics have savant skills is a myth. Almost functional autistics are at least partially savant because their ssuper especialization in ”narrow” intelectual or cognitive interests.
Schizophrenia seems like a uncontrolable imagination.
I’m very intrigued by the (weak) correlation between head size and intelligence. The average head size for men in Canada, the U.S., and Britain seems to be about 22.3 inches.
Einstein, with his 160 IQ, had a head rather smaller than average, at roughly 21 inches in circumference. I myself have a head size of 23 1/4 inches, placing me somewhat higher than average in head size; Rick Rosner, a man with an IQ of around 192, has a head size the about same as mine; Chris Langan, an American man with an IQ of around 210, has a whopping enormous skull at 25.5 inches in circumference.
Yet Russell, from the pictures at least, would appear to have a tiny, tiny little head – and I consider him to have been one of the most powerful, far-ranging, and formidable thinkers I have ever read. So it seems quite possible to have an itsy-bitsy little brain, but still have an intellect of the very highest order.
So my question is, does anybody know Russell’s actual head circumference? I only ask out of sheer morbid curiousity, because I am interested in how much or how little head size really does seem to play in intellectual potential. (Although to be fair, most big-headed people seem to have very quick thinking, and seem to work less intensely than I need to to learn things; they appear to have a rather easier time of thinking overall – I hope this is just my imagination.)
he doesn’t have a tiny head. He’s dolichocephalic, which could result in an even greater circumference than otherwise suggested by portraits of him .
for example, here’s a side view of him http://d3us1ooh8rs9qf.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Rajendra-Kumar-Bertrand-Russel-e1413109054555.jpg
“Einstein, with his 160 IQ”
This is a common claim but there is no evidence Einstein ever took an IQ test and IQ tests aren’t designed to catch the kind of Ingenuity and Genius that Einstein was noted for.
I see what you mean; his head does appear rather larger from the side than it would seem from straight on. Yet it would still seem not to be a terribly large head, due to its relative narrowness, and I would still be interested in getting a better sense of its actual circumference, if only for comparison with the average head sizes of other geniuses in general.
I find it rather comforting that one does not appear to require a large head in order to be of the very highest intelligence. Isaac Newton, for example, had an surprisingly small head (as reconstructed from his death mask), and it was often remarked on in his life as to how little and unexceptional his head looked; yet Newton was an astonishingly powerful thinker, capable (in his words) of holding complex equations in his mind for months, until they surrendered to his reasoning.
Anatole France, who won the Nobel Prize, is notable for having perhaps the tiniest brain of ANY genius, anywhere, weighing in at only 1,017 grams; the average brain size for men is 1300-1400 grams. And Einstein’s brain was also smaller than average, at around 1200 grams; about 200 less than the norm. Other small-headed geniuses include Igor Stravinsky, perhaps the greatest composer of the Twentieth Century, and Marilyn vos Savant, whose IQ is around 228, but whose head is smaller than that of her own husband.
And since Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, one of the greatest who ever lived, I am fascinated to know what his head size may have been, since such a thing (for me, at least) would count greatly against the notion that greater head-size is what is necessary for the highest intelligence. My suspicion, as many researchers are now speculating, is that genius has more to do with brain density and thickness of internal structuring, as in the brains of women, which show no noticeable differences in intelligence when compared with men.
Marilyn Vos Savant IQ is 186. The 228 figure was obtained when she was 10.
The 186 number is invalid too because it comes from the so called “mega test” which is an unsupervised and untimed test that no Psychologist would vouch for testing that high. The highest IQ that a reliable IQ tests(like the Wais) test to is about 160(std 15) at the most
Brain size only explains about 16% of the variation in IQ, and head size is only a crude proxy for brain size and scientific eminence is only a crude proxy for IQ, so it’s not surprising that many eminent scientists lacked big brains or big heads.
Having said that, the brains of many eminent scientists were weighed in the early 20th century and it seems their brains were huge on average (over 2 SD above other white men of their time).
And I see no evidence that Marilyn has a smaller head than her husband.
About this
” Marilyn vos Savant, whose IQ is around 228″
This is a tiresome myth
“Alan S. Kaufman, a psychology professor and author of IQ tests, writes in IQ Testing 101 that “Miss Savant was given an old version of the Stanford-Binet (Terman & Merrill 1937), which did, indeed, use the antiquated formula of MA/CA × 100. But in the test manual’s norms, the Binet does not permit IQs to rise above 170 at any age, child or adult. And the authors of the old Binet stated: ‘Beyond fifteen the mental ages are entirely artificial and are to be thought of as simply numerical scores.’ (Terman & Merrill 1937). …the psychologist who came up with an IQ of 228 committed an extrapolation of a misconception, thereby violating almost every rule imaginable concerning the meaning of IQs.”[12] Savant has commented on reports mentioning varying IQ scores she was said to have obtained.[13] ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant
Ah, yes, that’s quite true. I had only glanced briefly at a picture of Marilyn and her husband when they were relatively younger (and he had more hair), and it had looked to me that her head was a bit smaller than his. There are quite a few other pictures of the two of them together where both their heads look relatively similar in size (with Marilyn’s being, perhaps, just a tiny bit larger!)
However, here is an interview with Marilyn, where the host has a big honkin’ enormous head (it seems reasonably rather larger than her own), where it is Marilyn rather than the host who is known for having the higher IQ.
Look up:
Marilyn Mach Vos Savant Interview on the Joe Franklyn Show – (YouTube)
(Sorry, I couldn’t link to this on my cell!)
Also, here is an article on the brain sizes of eminent scientists and intellectuals near the beginning of the Twentieth Century. It seems true on average that the brain of the average genius was somewhat larger than more ordinary brains of the time -but even this seems inconsistent, as noted in the article itself, with extreme genius emerging from people with all manner of brain sizes!
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/estimating-the-iq-of-geniuses-from-their-average-brain-size/
Einstein’s smaller-than-average head, Stravinsky’s rather small head, Newton’s quite tiny head – even the brilliant Walt Whitman had a smaller than average brain; the article notes that “The other end (of the scale) was a bit more confusing and embarrassing. Walt Whitman managed to hear America singing with only 1,282 grams!” – (The average brain weight at that time being about 1316 grams.)
I myself had started out as a tentative believer in larger head size being an indicator of (somewhat) higher intelligence among people. But now I just don’t know. Women and men appear to have no appreciable differences in IQ, despite woman having smaller heads on average than men. What could this mean?
Here is a picture of Chris Langan and his wife Gina Losasso. Langan’s IQ of 210, and his enormous 25.5 inch head, seem indicative of genius; yet his wife, who clearly has a much smaller head than Langan, also is known for having a very high IQ, of 168.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan
And since IQs in the 185-210 range become quite unreliable (people in this range being said to be “immeasurably brilliant”) I would say that Marilyn Savant’s IQ is at least somewhat comparable to Langan’s – particularly since Mrs. Savant is not known for having an especially larger-than-normal head.
I am starting to approach the reluctant conclusion that brain size may be only mysteriously related to intelligence. Bertrand Russell’s own narrow, seemingly smaller-than-average head may be just one more example of this. It is, I must say, rather difficult to find exact head or brain-measurement sizes for many individuals of genius, and I suspect that many such measurements are simply not known. Russell’s own head is clearly much, much smaller than Chris Langan’s huge 25.5 inch cranium – maybe even a bit below the average – yet I would argue that as a truly significant philosopher of logic, language, mathematics and science, Russell may have been just as intelligent as Chris Langan, perhaps even more so. So I just don’t know.
Brain weight is to IQ as height is to weight. One causal factor out of many. Just as it’s possible to weigh 400 lbs despite being short, it’s possible to have a stratospheric IQ despite having a small brain. But generally speaking there’s a moderate correlation.
A nice (and somewhat comical) example of a scientist with a large head is Oswald Avery, a Canadian-American who proved that DNA carries the genetic material in cells. He had a very well-developed cranium-not just large, but bulbous with minimal sloping. I’ve always liked the classic b/w photo of him holding up a test tube, which probably helped create the popular notion of the geeky lab scientist in Hollywood. You can check out his large cranium on dnalc.org. Incidentally, he never won the Nobel, though many of his peers believed he deserved one.
Very interesting article.
There is an anecdote that Russell estimated his own IQ at 180 and Einstein’s at 160: http://ezinearticles.com/?Einstein,-IQ,-Emotional-Intelligence-and-the-Holy-Spirit&id=646184 But I’m not sure how reliable that is. The striking thing however is that, if it’s true, he was probably thinking of the Cattell scale (Cattell actually attended a lot of Russell’s lectures). Which means the IQs would transform to 150 and 138 respectively in the Wechsler scale. Pretty close to your estimates, right?
By the way this is a curious thing about Russell’s intelligence: https://books.google.de/books?id=AzssomBIDRIC&pg=PA87&dq=bertrand+russell+iq&hl=de&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=bertrand%20russell%20iq&f=false
Would you be interested in doing an estimate of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s IQ? Russell and many other very smart people said pretty much that he was the greatest genius they knew.
Wittgenstein was from a Jewish background and his family was the second wealthiest in Austria-Hungary.
Despite pretty low math grades in school (he flunked Geometry) he became an accomplished engineer and logician. Russell actually thought that Wittgenstein was better equipped to do his work than he himself was.
And the “Philosophical Investigations” are generally regarded as the greatest Philosophy book of the last century.
I think he would make an interesting case for an IQ estimate.
I have recently been reading in depth about the astonishing “man without a brain,” discovered by Dr. Lorber in the 1980’s – a mathematics student with an IQ of 126, but who had almost no brain matter in his head at all. And recently, a 44 year-old man missing most of his brain (but living a normal life as a civil servant with an IQ of 75) was discovered and studied in 2007. A video of a lecture on the study of this man can be found here:
At first I thought this was some kind of a weak joke, a silly hoax; but it turns out that the phenomena that causes this remarkable condition is called hydrocephalus, a swelling of the fluid spaces in the center of the brain, resulting occasionally in vastly reduced brain matter, of significantly lower mass and weight than that of an average brain, but with remarkably unimpaired functioning in many people with the condition. (Not all; roughly half those with hydrocephalus experience severely reduced functioning, but by no means all of them.)
How can such a tiny amount of brain matter continue to function at normal levels – or in the case of the math student and some others, at higher than normal levels? This, for me, shatters forever the notion that larger heads equal higher intelligence in any necessary way whatsoever, and easily explains how some of the greatest intellects in all of history have emerged from individuals with very small heads.
The thing that this has primarily taught me is simply that the brain is weird. Even a tiny lesion on the outer surface of a normal-sized brain can cause impaired functioning for the rest of one’s life; and yet, steady pressure that decreases the brain’s size to even 75 percent of its normal size/mass/weight, as with hydrocephalic swelling, can result in the brain simply continuing to function as per normal, or even higher than normal. Intelligence is mysterious. The brain is mysterious and weird.
A small head, it seems clear, should in no way hold a person back from the very highest of intellectual achievements and functioning. A small head means basically nothing. Brain-matter seems to operate on (presently) unknown quantum powers and forces that govern intelligence, an is remarkably bizarre; and the idea of a larger brain equaling higher intelligence now strikes me as quite ridiculous.
The only thing that genuinely seems to hold most people back from demonstrating genius potential is a lack of hard work. The smartest people on Earth (like the composer Stravinsky and Bertrand Russell, with their tiny little heads) tend to be raging workaholics. They are driven to succeed, and sacrifice astonishing amounts of time and energy to achieve eminence. Even Chris Langan, with his giant 25.5 inch head, is rigorously disciplined, studying every day an hour of philosophy, an hour of mathematics, an hour of physics, and an hour of a language. Brilliant people, quite simply, work hard and never give up. This seems to be what causes extreme intelligence in people, rather than a larger head. Having at least some brain matter at all is the only real requirement; the rest would seem to be up to you.
How can such a tiny amount of brain matter continue to function at normal levels – or in the case of the math student and some others, at higher than normal levels? This, for me, shatters forever the notion that larger heads equal higher intelligence in any necessary way whatsoever, and easily explains how some of the greatest intellects in all of history have emerged from individuals with very small heads.
Although a large brain greatly increases the odds of being smart, it’s not even remotely a necessary or sufficient criterion.
I have begun to wonder even about the studies that show that larger brains tend to have a (weak) correlation with somewhat higher intelligence. People with larger heads tend to be rated (in general) as being more attractive than people with relatively smaller heads, especially among men; and people who are taken to be more attractive in society tend to be more confident about themselves, tend to have more job and career opportunities in life, and tend to work harder than those who are rated (and who rate themselves) as societally less attractive – and people who work relatively harder than others at pretty much ANYTHING tend to have relatively higher IQs. Actor Michael Cain (for example) has famously said that to succeed as a male actor in Hollywood, a man must have a fairly large head – larger in general than his average female co-star’s heads. Small-headed men tend not to do too well in Hollywood, since it is taken to be somewhat odd-looking (by today’s societal standards, at least) for a male star to consistently have a smaller head than most of his female co-stars. And the same seems to hold true in society; large-headed people, especially men, are often taken as more attractive than smaller-headed men, and tend to feel more confident, have more career opportunities, and work harder in life than those rated as less attractive. And those who consistently work harder tend to be relatively sharper on average than those who do not. It doesn’t’ appear to matter too much WHAT the work is; Sheer exertion and mental effort are seemingly enough to sharpen up anybody’s thinking and lead to at least a slightly higher relative level of IQ. Even just feeling happier and more confident about oneself has been scientifically shown to raise IQ by at least a few points in many cases. The larger-brain equalling higher intelligence correlation may be explainable using factors that have nothing whatever to do with larger brains equalling higher intelligence. I rather suspect this is more than likely the case.
There is a quote I keep finding myself coming back to that just seems to make head-size quite irrelevant to me when considering the intelligence levels of ANYBODY:
(From the book “How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci:)
“(Your brain) is capable of making a virtually unlimited number of synaptic connections or potential patterns of thought. – This last point was established first by Pyotr Anokhin of Moscow University, a student of the legendary psychological pioneer Ivan Pavlov. Anokhin staggered the entire scientific community when he published his research in 1968 demonstrating that the minimum number of potential thought patterns the average brain can make is the number 1 followed by 10.5 million kilometers of typewritten zeros.
Anokhin compared the human brain to “a multidimensional musical instrument that could play an infinite number of musical pieces simultaneously.” He emphasized that each of us is gifted with a birthright of virtually unlimited potential. And he proclaimed that no man or woman, past or present, has fully explored the capacities of the brain. Anokhin would probably agree, however, that Leonardo da Vinci (for instance) could serve as a most inspiring example for those of us wishing to explore our full capacities.”
If the average human brain (which is relatively small to begin with) has never been explored to its fullest capacities, how can having a somewhat smaller head make any particular difference? If “no man or woman or woman, past or present, has (ever) fully explored the capacities of the brain,” and “the minimum number of potential thought patterns the average brain can make is the number 1 followed by 10.5 million kilometers of typewritten zeros,” how does brain size even factor into the equation at all, beyond at least HAVING a brain? The only conclusion I have been able to draw from all this is that brain size in a healthy, well-functioning human being seems to make NO difference intelligence-wise. Every healthy human being appears to have been designed by nature to function PERFECTLY within the boundaries of a human being, “gifted with a birthright of virtually unlimited potential.”
Russell made an IQ test with a result of 180. He told he didn’t like to do things like cleaning (making tea) and when he had to do so, he did it in bad mood and was angry the rest of the day.
The thing about Russel is that he not only won the Nobel Prize in literature but he was instrumental in the development of modern Mathematical Logic and Analyticalally philosophy. There aren’t many people who were intellectually more well rounded than Russel.