5% of people have an IQ under 70 and this is generally considered as the benchmark for "mental retardation".
Genius IQ is generally considered to begin around 140 to 145, representing ~.25% of the population (1 in 400). Here's a rough guide:
* 115-124 - Above average (e.g., university students)
* 125-134 - Gifted (e.g., post-graduate students)
* 135-144 - Highly gifted (e.g., intellectuals)
* 145-154 - Genius (e.g., professors)
* 155-164 - Genius (e.g., Nobel Prize winners)
* 165-179 - High genius
* 180-200 - Highest genius
* >200 - "Unmeasurable genius"
In 1926, psychologist Dr. Catherine Morris Cox – who had been assisted by Dr. Lewis M. Terman, Dr. Florence L. Goodenaugh, and Dr. Kate Gordon – published a study “of the most eminent men and women” who had lived between 1450 and 1850 to estimate what their IQs might have been. Data from that study as well as other sources around the net were compiled to form the following list.
* 190 – Ludwig Wittgenstein
* 190 – Sir Isaac Newton
* 190 РFran̤ois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
* 180 – Leonardo da Vinci
* 180 – David Hume
* 180 – Buonarroti Michelangelo
* 179 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
* 176 – Emanuel Swedenborg
* 176 – Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
* 175 – Johannes Kepler
* 175 – Edmund Spenser
* 175 – Baruch Spinoza
* 174 – John Stuart Mill
* 171 – Blaise Pascal
* 170 – Michael Faraday
* 170 – George Friedrich Händel
* 170 – Antoine Lavoisier
* 170 – Martin Luther
* 165 – Galileo Galilei
* 165 – Charlotte Brontë
* 165 – Johann Sebastian Bach
* 165 – Thomas Hobbes
* 165 РCarl von Linn̩
* 165 – John Locke
* 165 – Joseph Priestley
* 165 – Ludwig van Beethoven
* 165 – Samuel Johnson
* 162 РRen̩ Descartes
* 162 – Madame De Stael
* 160 – Albert Einstein
* 160 – Robert Boyle
* 160 – Benjamin Franklin
* 159 – Immanuel Kant
* 156 – Linus Carl Pauling
* 156 – Sofia Kovalevskaya
* 156 – Thomas Chatterton
* 156 – Olof Palme
* 155 – Rembrandt van Rijn
* 155 – Miguel de Cervantes
* 155 – Jonathan Swift
* 153 – Charles Darwin
* 153 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
* 150 – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
* 150 – Nicolaus Copernicus
* 150 – Abraham Lincoln
* 145 – Napoleon Bonaparte
* 145 – Anna Lindh
* 143 – George Sand (Aurore Dupin)
* 140 – George Washington
* 130 – Ulysses S. Grant
* 130 – Sir Francis Drake