The smartest person of all time: The mystery behind the highest IQ ever measured

A woman holds a record that many considered impossible: an IQ of 228 – a value that far surpasses scientific legends. While Einstein was measured at 160-190 and Stephen Hawking at 160, today that name stands for the phenomenon of human intelligence. But this woman became famous not for her genius, but because 10,000 academics believed she had made a mathematical error. Her story is a fascinating document of how even brilliant minds can become blind to cognitive biases.

The Childhood of an Exceptional Talent

Marilyn vos Savant was not like other children from a young age. By age 10, she had already developed a photographic memory performance that was unusual – she could memorize entire book pages and read through all 24 volumes of the Britannica Encyclopedia. Her intelligence was undeniable from the start. But in a world that hardly encouraged girls in such fields, her potential was overlooked. “Nobody was particularly interested in me, mostly because I’m a girl,” she later recalled.

School offered her no special challenges. She attended a regular public school, later the University of Washington. After just two years, she dropped out to support her family. It seemed one of the brightest minds of her generation would go unnoticed – at least for now.

The Turning Point: 1985 and the World Public

Everything changed when Guinness World Records in 1985 listed Marilyn vos Savant as the new record holder with the highest IQ ever recorded. Suddenly, she was everywhere – on the covers of the New York Magazine and Parade, as a guest on David Letterman’s famous Late Show. The public was fascinated by this woman with extraordinary intellect.

Parade gave her the chance to write her own column, “Ask Marilyn.” For a passionate writer, this was a dream come true. No one could have predicted that this very column would lead to one of the greatest intellectual controversies of the 1990s.

The Monty Hall Dilemma: The Question That Changed Everything

In September 1990, Marilyn received the following question, named after the host Monty Hall from the show “Deal or No Deal”:

You are participating in a game show. In front of you are three doors. Behind one is a car, behind the other two are goats. You choose one door. The host then intentionally opens another door, behind which is a goat. Should you now switch to another door?

Her answer was clear: “Yes, you should switch.” These four words sparked a storm. Marilyn received over 10,000 letters, almost 1,000 of them from PhD holders, math professors, and scientists. The tone was devastating: “You’re the goat!”, “You totally messed up,” “Maybe women just understand math differently.” About 90 percent were convinced she was wrong.

The Mathematical Truth: Why Most People Were Wrong

But Marilyn was completely right. The problem can be elegantly broken down:

Scenario 1: You initially chose the door with the car (probability 1/3)

• The host opens a door with a goat
• You switch to another door
• You lose

Scenario 2: You initially chose a door with a goat (probability 2/3)

• The host opens the other door with a goat
• You switch to the remaining door
• You win

The mathematical reality: The probability of winning by switching is 2/3, not 1/2. This is no coincidence but pure logic. The key is that the host already has knowledge – he knows where the car is and deliberately opens a door with a goat.

Most people fall into three cognitive traps:

1. Resetting the situation: When new information is added, people unconsciously forget their original choice and treat the decision as if starting anew. As a result, they think both remaining doors have a 50 percent chance.

2. The power of small numbers: With only three doors, the structure of the problem is hard to grasp. In larger scenarios (e.g., 100 doors), the correct answer would be immediately obvious.

3. The bias of uniform distribution: People assume all probabilities must be evenly distributed, ignoring the asymmetric information the host has.

Scientific Confirmation

Over time, skeptics had to reconsider their position. MIT conducted extensive computer simulations confirming Marilyn’s answer. The TV show MythBusters performed live tests and experimentally proved that switching is indeed the better strategy. Some renowned scientists later admitted their mistakes and publicly apologized.

The Monty Hall problem became a classic in probability theory and is now taught at universities worldwide. And Marilyn vos Savant, the woman with the highest documented IQ, is remembered more for this column than for her mathematical achievements.

Her story reveals something profound: intelligence alone is not enough. It also takes the ability to see the world differently – and the persistence to stand up for that different perspective, even when 10,000 so-called experts disagree.