Smartest Person Of All Time

[THUNDER HANDS]

It ain't me folks.

:)

oh, and I should add, I'm voting for Archimedes, if you don't know who he is you should really research him. I think you'll find he's by far smarter than the more well-known candidates like DaVinci and Einstein.

[ixion]

1. uhm... it's DaVinci...

just a heads up... ;-)

[YellowRubberDuckie]

36. Actually it's DiVinci.

Anyway, that's how I always see it spelled.
Duckie

[trof]

55. not to mountanize a molehill, but

Dan Brown's best seller is "The Da Vinci Code" and I think he would know.

[VermontDem2004]

2. D'uh me

I say Issac Newton.

[DODI]

3. I voted for Albert

But I really think that title may go to Ben Franklin.

[ixion]

4. indeed.. Ben was a very wise man....

Albert has been someone I've admired since I was in grade school. I can remember drawing pictures of him. I think, though, that for all around rennaisance-man-type smarts, I've got to go with DaVinci. He was light years ahead of his time.

[Wickerman]

61. Franklin was also blessed with a high EQ

or a lotta emotional intelligence. He wasn't the befuddled scientist, he was the whole package. Well, maybe not the whole - he wasn't exactly an attractive man, was he? But, from all soudns he did well with the women, msut have been a real character. He and I share a birthday, and that is about it...

[boxster]

5. Not to nit-pick, but shouldn't this have been "Smartest Person..."

unless there's something about Marilyn I'm unaware of.

Edit: minor grammatical correction

Edit2: just in case you wonder what the hell I'm talking about, the posting was originally "Smartest Man...."

[newyawker99]

52. Congrats boxster!! 200 posts

:toast:

[Maple]

6. Da Vinci

And it's my theory that 'he' was actually Leanora DaVinci

[GOPFighter]

7. Ach, no Plato?

Also, Franklin and Jefferson could qualify

[HEyHEY]

8. Emanuel Stuart

[TXlib]

9. Richard Feynman

[LoneStarLiberal]

28. Huzzah for Feynman!

I'd say Feynman and John von Neumann before any of those listed above.

[CPschem]

10. Where are the philosophers??

c'mon now!

[Guaranteed]

26. Yeah that's what I'm sayin'!

I wanna see Plato or Aristotle up there. Maybe a Kant or two.

[TXlib]

11. Or Stephen Hawking

[SOteric]

47. I was going to suggest him, - and maybe Paul A.M. Dirak,

[arwalden]

12. Charles Darwin.

[arwalden]

13. Nicolaus Copernicus

[VelmaD]

14. It's a sad fuckin' commentary...

when the only woman on that list is Marilyn vos Savant. *sigh*

[THUNDER HANDS]

15. who else?

would you have chosen...and whom would you have tossed off?

[supernova]

18. Marie Curie

Toss off Swedenborg. Not because he's not valuable, but because most of your choices are scientists, not philosophers/theologians.

[VelmaD]

40. Madame Curie is a good choice...

so is Hypatia.

[supernova]

46. Hypatia?

Who is she? I want to learn someone new.

[ironflange]

48. She gets my vote!

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_of_Alexandria

[Brucey]

16. Isaac Newton is a pretty good choice.

But I think Ludwig Wittgenstein might have been the smartest ever. Alan Turing maybe was even smarter. Richard Feynman was brilliant.

[leftyandproud]

17. Davinci..

um, I thought he was an artist...
?

how does throwing paint indicate high intelligence?
Einstein all the way.

[THUNDER HANDS]

19. Davinci invented shit

go look him up.

:eyes:

[trof]

54. You mean before Da Vinci there was no shit?

Damn.
What did people do?
;-)

[ixion]

20. DaVinci was more than just an artist

he was an inventor, philosopher, engineer... just a great all around visionary, IMHO.

[Blue-Jay]

22. You should read up on Davinci.

He was much more than just a painter.

Hey! How come I'm not on the poll?

(oh, yeah.)

[TXlib]

23. DaVinci was the archtypical Renaissance Man

Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, philosopher...

What else did he do?

[THUNDER HANDS]

21. It shocks me nobody else is voting for Archimedes

He basically fought off the entire Roman army by himself. He invented stuff that is just unbelievable.

Please, go look the guy up.

[TXlib]

24. Yeah, Archimedes was pretty incredible

So was Eratostheses of Cyrene... the first (documented) measurement of the circumference of the earth.

[ixion]

25. hey, you're skewing your poll...

by making suggestions like that... you may be right though...;-)

[Snow]

27. Hmmmm, good list as far as it goes,

but it's European guys? Mostly scientists, mathematicians? No musicians? No Asians, one woman? How intelligent was Queen Elizabeth I, for instance? Or Lao Tzu?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
But of that list, it's a tough choice between Archimedes and Gauss. Did you hear that recent computer enhancement of an old manuscript palimpsest showed Archie damn near invented calculus?

[Dudley_DUright]

30. I saw that show on PBS

I had no idea. I liked that he was able to derive the relative volumes of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder. Oh, here is a website that talks about it. The interesting thing is you need calculus like ideas to derive this relationship.

http://scidiv.bcc.ctc.edu/Math/ArchimedesTombstone.html

[THUNDER HANDS]

31. yes

that's where I got the idea for this question from. I was just amazed at what the guy was able to come up with in his head. He managed to figure out a formula for infinity for jeebers sake!

[Dudley_DUright]

29. I my field of physics

it is probably a toss up between Newton and Einstein. Newton was far ahead of his time and invented Calculus (independently of Leibniz), a whole branch of mathematics, in order to solve certain physics problems not to mention being a good inventor (e.g. reflecting telescope). Einstein and General Relativity was the most revolutionary idea in the last few hundred years (with quantum physics which he did not like but contributed to anyway a close second). No one else was even asking the right questions when he was working on GR. Einstein was about 30-50 years ahead of his time. I would probably go with Einstein, but that is just a personal bias of mine. Recall Time named Einstein man of the 20th century a few years ago. Feynman was also brilliant, but not quite as revolutionary as Newton or Einstein. Hawking and Kip Thorne are also quite brilliant.

[ProfessorGAC]

53. Roger Penrose, Too!

Hawking referred, in print, to Penrose as the smartest guy he had ever met. Given the circles in which Hawking runs, that's high praise, indeed.
The Professor

[Zuni]

32. In terms of IQ it is none of the above

I believe James Stuart Mill, the philosopher and author of Utilitarianism was the smartest man ever. (If you count IQ)

On this list I would say either the visionary Da Vinci or the otherworldy Einstein--
I would say Einstein, for being able to think of such abstract ideas which have stood up to every single test science has performed on them

[theemu]

33. It's been said that right behind JS Mill is..

Goethe.

[SPICYHOT]

34. UHHHH i'm not in your list

how come???:wtf:

[Xithras]

35. Feynman or Hawking

Utterly brilliant men...I'm convinced that our children will look on them as we look on Einstein. Kip Thorne should probably be on that list too. I met Mr. Thorne at CalTech a number of years back and had a brief discussion with him about gravitational wave deflection (anti-gravity). I'm pretty well versed in all forms of physics, but the man just blew me away with his innate understanding of the workings of our universe on a quantum scale (for the record, he stated that anti-gravity devices may be theoretically possible, but he wasn't holding his breath).

[SmileyBoy]

37. Stephen Hawking.

Although maybe Einstein was as smart. Stephen Hawking has a better understanding of the universe than probably any other human who ever lived.

On edit: I've read a couple of Hawking's books, and he probably talks about the most deep stuff of any person. It's like he's stoned.:-) I like how he intertwines the attributes of theology with super-cosmic study.

[patdem]

38. Where is Sharon Stone????

[VOX]

45. She's out taking her MENSA exam...

again and again and again.

:toast:

[SmileyBoy]

39. What about that Arabic guy who discovered math???

Forgot his name. He came up with algebra.

[Nevernose]

42. I believe his name was

Al-Jebra.

[ironflange]

41. Here's another woman to consider

Mary. You know the one. Look what she started, as per the old story:



Joseph: Aw, shit, your old man is gonna kill me.

Mary: Don't worry, I thought up a great story.

[Nevernose]

43. Tesla

The mad genius who invented alternating current.

[proud patriot]

44. Benjiman Franklin n/t

n/t

[PittPoliSci]

49. Johann von Goerthe.

Faust = the shit.

[KittyWampus]

50. Benjamin Franklin

He was one of a few great men in a great moment of History.

He discovered, invented, penned, negotiated and worked his way toward a Mastery that is truly inspiring... and all with a GREAT sense of humor!

[Loyal]

51. George W Bush

HAHAHAHAHAHAH jk! :D Albert Einstein!

[StrongBad]

56. Immanuel Kant

n/t

[JVS]

57. Gauss

[moof]

58. magic rat may be the smartest but

he does indeed know who was the smartest.

BTW under the if a tree falls in the forest heading.

It was Archimedes who discovered many of the things you attribute to

Newton. It was just not known till recently when a copy of Archimedes

"The method" was at last rediscovered and translated.

Here is a link to a bit about it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/archimedes/lrk_biography.html

Not to take anything away from Newton but Archimedes had already

discovered Calculus 1900 years before Newton when the climate for

discovery was far less populated.

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

59. I didn't recognize two or three of the names on this poll

So I assume that I'm out of the running!

[moof]

60. down but not out ritc2750

just fork over the cure for cancer or better yet

the cure for ignorance & you are in the running.

[underpants]

62. You forgot "The Smartest Man in America"