It was really difficult to come up with a list of the most intelligent people because there are many of them, and it depends on your definition of intelligence. But I was able to list the top 5 that I think they are extraordinary people in terms of excellence and achievements.

Sir Isaac Newton:

This genius was born in 1642 and died in 1727, he was a mathematician and physicist and natural philosopher. Born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, where he attended school, he entered Cambridge University in 1661; he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1667. He formulated laws of universal gravitation and motion-laws that

explain how objects move on Earth as well as through the heavens. If you ever taken a physics you would learn about his three popular laws, and you may hear the apply story that led him to discover the theory of force and gravity. He basically saw an apply fall in his orchard at some time during 1665 or 1666 that Newton conceived that the same force governed the motion of the Moon and the apple. He calculated the force needed to hold the Moon in its orbit, as compared with the force pulling an object to the ground. He also calculated the centripetal force needed to hold a stone in a sling, and the relation between the length of a pendulum and the time of its swing. These early explorations were not

soon exploited by Newton, though he studied astronomy and the problems of planetary motion.. Because he was cleaver in math, he invited the area of mathematics called calculus “used to be called method of fluxions“. While still a student, Newton read recent work on optics and light by the English physicists Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke; he also studied both the mathematics and the physics of the French philosopher and scientist René Descartes. All these amazing discoveries made his take our number one of the world’s most intelligent people.

Albert Einstein:

He is considered one of the greatest and most popular scientists of all time. He was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. One last note, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921.

“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.” You may have guessed who I am talking about; yes it’s the naturalist Charles Darwin who lived between 1809 -1882. Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln. He was the fifth child and second son of Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood. Darwin was the British naturalist who became famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection. Like several scientists before him, Darwin believed all the life on earth evolved (developed gradually) over millions of years from a few common ancestors.

Socrates: (469-399)

despite his foundational place in the history of ideas, actually wrote nothing. Socrates wrote nothing because he felt that knowledge was a living, interactive thing. Socrates’ method of philosophical inquiry consisted in questioning people on the positions they asserted and working them through questions into a contradiction, thus proving to them that their original assertion was wrong. Socrates himself never takes a position; in The Apology he radically and skeptically claims to know nothing at all except that he knows nothing. Socrates and Plato refer to this method of questioning as elenchus , which means something like “cross-examination” The Socratic elenchus eventually gave rise to dialectic, the idea that truth needs to be pursued by modifying one’s position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. It is this idea of the truth being pursued, rather than discovered, that characterizes Socratic thought and much of our world view today. The Western notion of dialectic is somewhat Socratic in nature in that it is conceived of as an ongoing process. Although Socrates in The Apology claims to have discovered no other truth than that he knows no truth, the Socrates of Plato’s other earlier dialogues is of the opinion that truth is somehow attainable through this process of elenchus .

Leonardo Da Vinci 1452-1519:

A painter, a sculptor, an architect and an engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci’s numerous skills have earned him the title of renaissance master. Da Vinci’s fascination with science and his in-depth study of human anatomy aided him in mastering the realist art form. While Leonardo’s counterparts were known to create static figures in their works, Leonardo always tried to incorporate movement and expression into his own paintings. All the personages in his works are painted with great accuracy and detail that it is sometimes said that Da Vinci painted from the bones outward. Leonardo was and is best known as an artist, the creator of such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, and The Last Supper. Yet Leonardo was far more than a great artist: he had one of the best scientific minds of his time. He made painstaking observations and carried out research in fields ranging from architecture and civil engineering to astronomy to anatomy and zoology to geography, geology and paleontology. In the words of his biographer Giorgio Vasari. Leonardo knew well the rocks and fossils (mostly Cenozoic mollusks) found in his native north Italy. No doubt he had ample opportunity to observe them during his service as an engineer and artist at the court of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, from 1482 to 1499: Vasari wrote that “Leonardo was frequently occupied in the preparation of plans to remove mountains or to pierce them with tunnels from plain to plain.” He made many observations on mountains and rivers, and he grasped the principle that rocks can be formed by deposition of sediments by water, while at the same time the rivers erode rocks and carry their sediments to the sea, in a continuous grand cycle.