Are assessments of scientific intelligence biased toward mathematically oriented fields?
Every once in a while someone will publish a list of the top 10 or 100 smartest people in the world and this time it's the Huffington Post's turn. While admitting that IQ is subjective, the article treats us to a list of ten people who most of us would agree are on the right tail end of the spectrum of intelligence. As usual, what's interesting is what is left out. The list seems to lean disproportionately toward child prodigies with high IQs and the scientific side leans completely toward physicists and mathematicians. This is not unusual; if you are talking about science and ask a layman who he thinks are the most brilliant scientists in history, you are more likely to hear the names of Einstein, Feynman and Hawking rather than Darwin, Crick and Pauling.
Linus Pauling kept on making major discoveries well into his 80s (Image: Library of Congress).
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