Blaise PascalMathematician and philosopher
Cox rated him 180 for ages 17 to 26, the same as this page's score. Cox's childhood rating for him was 180.
What does an IQ of 180 mean?
An IQ of 180 means a score higher than about 99.9999951% of people: roughly 1 in 20,741,280. It is the start of the "profoundly gifted" band, rare enough that the test publisher Pearson notes only one child in 20 million same-age peers would be expected to reach it. Voltaire and Blaise Pascal were among those Catharine Cox rated at about 180.
99.9999951stpercentile
1 in 20,741,280score 180 or higher
Profoundly giftedlevel of giftedness
180IQ scoreTop 0.0000048%
Where 180 sits on the bell curve
An IQ of 180 is 80 points above the average of 100, or 5.33 standard deviations. That is so far into the right-hand tail of the bell curve that the people scoring this high barely show up: about 0.0000048% of the population, the orange sliver below.
About 396 people on Earth would score 180 or higher on a perfect bell curve: roughly 16 in the United States and 3 in the UK.
A closer look at an IQ of 180
Leta Hollingworth spent 23 years searching New York City for children testing at or above 180 on the Stanford-Binet, "the densest center of population in this country". She found twelve. Her book about them, published in 1942 after her death, is still the classic study of children at this level, though her scores were ratio IQs from older tests.
On the Cattell scale, a standard 180 would be printed as 228, the same number as Marilyn vos Savant's famous childhood score. Among historical figures, Cox estimated Voltaire, Pascal, William Pitt the Younger and the philosophers Schelling and Haller at about 180 for their young adulthood. The figure is also attached online to the actor James Woods, though we could find no interview or test record behind it.
How many people have an IQ of 180?
On the bell curve, about 1 person in 20,741,280 scores 180 or higher. The animation builds a crowd until you would expect to find one.
A crowd of 20,741,280 people
20,741,280
Each dot is one person. In a crowd this size, on average, just one would score 180 or above: the orange dot.
People scoring 180 or higher, by population
| Worldwide (8.2 billion people) | about 396 |
| India | about 71 |
| United States | about 16 |
| United Kingdom | about 3 |
| Canada | about 2 |
| Australia | about 1 |
Population: World Bank, total population, 2025. Counts assume the same bell curve in every country and are rounded. Real tests can't sort people this finely, as the next sections explain.
Which high-IQ societies accept an IQ of 180?
High-IQ societies set entry as a percentile, then print the matching score for each test they accept. A supervised 180 would meet every one of these bars.
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MensaTop 2% (98th percentile) on an approved, supervised test130met
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IntertelTop 1% (99th percentile); lists a Wechsler full-scale IQ of 135135met
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Triple Nine Society99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS full-scale IQ of 146146met
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International Society for Philosophical Enquiry99.9th percentile; lists a WAIS-III or WAIS-IV full-scale IQ of 146146met
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Prometheus Society1 in 30,000 (99.997th percentile), four standard deviations above average160met
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Mega SocietyOne in a million, beyond the range of standard tests171met
Scores for Mensa, Intertel, Triple Nine and ISPE are the Wechsler figures those societies list or that match their percentile. Prometheus and Mega give only a rarity; the scores shown are the matching points on the standard scale. Prometheus says no test currently being given is approved for its entry. Online test results are not accepted by any of them.
Can an IQ test measure 180?
Not on a standard clinical test. The WAIS-IV and the Stanford-Binet 5 report full-scale scores up to 160, so 180 is 20 points beyond where they stop. Only extended scales built for gifted children reach this far: the WISC-V extended norms go to 210 and the Stanford-Binet 5 Extended IQ to 225.
The deeper problem is evidence. Tests are scored against a norm sample, and for the adult Wechsler test, the WAIS-IV, that sample was 2,200 people aged 16 to 90. On the bell curve you would expect about 0.00011 of those people to score 180 or higher, a tiny fraction of one person. Extended scales get around this by using the patterns of children who hit the ceiling, but any score this high is an estimate projected from the curve.
Every score also carries measurement error, typically about five points either way, so 180 is best read as roughly 175 to 185, a range that lies entirely beyond what standard tests report. At these heights, extended-scale scores are also less certain than the margin suggests, because so few people have ever been measured there. Online tests can't reach this level at all; ours reports up to 145. How accurate are online IQ tests?
Sources: WAIS-IV range and norm sample from Canivez (2010), Mental Measurements Yearbook review; Stanford-Binet 5 and its Extended IQ from PRO-ED; WISC-V extended norms from Pearson Technical Report #6 (2019). Striped bars are extended scales, used only when a person hits the normal ceiling.
180 IQ on other scales
The same performance gives different numbers on scales with a different standard deviation, and the gap is widest at the top.
180standard scale (SD 15), used by Wechsler tests and on this page
185older Stanford-Binet scale (SD 16)
228Cattell scale (SD 24), used by some older and online tests
It works the other way too. A 180 quoted from a Cattell-scale test equals only about 150 on the standard scale, and a 180 on an SD 16 test equals about 175. How IQ standard deviations work.
Famous people with an estimated IQ near 180
No historical genius took an IQ test. These figures come from Catharine Cox's 1926 study, which estimated IQs from records of each person's early life, with one rating for childhood and one for ages 17 to 26.
Estimate, not a test
Albrecht von HallerPhysiologist and poet
Cox rated him 180 for ages 17 to 26, the same as this page's score. Cox's childhood rating for him was 175.
Estimate, not a test
William Pitt the YoungerBritish prime minister
Cox rated him 180 for ages 17 to 26, the same as this page's score. Cox's childhood rating for him was 160.
Source: Cox, C. M. (1926), Genetic Studies of Genius, Vol. II: The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses, Stanford University Press. Cox stressed that thin records pull estimates down. Read more in where the historical genius IQ estimates came from.
Famous people said to have an IQ of 180: real or myth?
Lists of celebrity IQs put many famous names at or near 180. We traced each figure to its earliest source, and none comes from a published IQ test.
JW
180No evidence of a test
James Woods
Widely repeated and often credited to him, but no interview or test record could be found.
RA
178No evidence of a test
Rowan Atkinson
The figure appears on many lists of celebrity IQs with no traceable source.
Sources for every claim are listed in our celebrity IQ list.
Hollingworth's twelve children above 180
"In twenty-three years' seeking in New York City and the local metropolitan area... I have found only twelve children who test at or above 180 IQ (S-B)," Hollingworth wrote. "This number represents the winnowing from thousands of children tested, hundreds of them brought for the testing because of their mental gifts."
Pearson's 2019 technical report on WISC-V extended norms makes the same point in modern terms: "According to the bell curve, out of 20,000,000 same-age peers, only one child would be expected to obtain an FSIQ of 180 or higher." One of Hollingworth's pupils, with an IQ of 190, summed up the cost: "It isn't good to be in college so awfully young."
Sources: Hollingworth, L. S. (1942), Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development, World Book Company (Project Gutenberg edition); Raiford, Courville, Peters and others (2019), WISC-V Technical Report #6: Extended Norms, Pearson.
What does an IQ of 180 mean?
A score of 180 means a rank of about one in twenty million for your age, the threshold of the "profoundly gifted" band. Modern tests can only estimate it with extended norms built for children, and any single score this high carries a wide margin of error.
Where 180 falls among the levels of giftedness
115–129Mildly gifted
130–144Moderately gifted
145–159Highly gifted
160–179Exceptionally gifted
180+Profoundly gifted
Levels and ranges from Gross, M. U. M. (2000), "Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Students: An Underserved Population", Understanding Our Gifted. They are a guide for education, not a ranking of people.
How far 180 is from other milestones
34 points above the Triple Nine and ISPE bar (146)a score of 180 is about 22,448 times rarer than 146
20 points above the ceiling of most professional tests (160)a score of 180 is about 657 times rarer than 160
9 points above the Mega Society's one-in-a-million level (171)a score of 180 is about 23 times rarer than 171
Exactly at the start of the profoundly gifted bandwhere the "profoundly gifted" band begins
5.33 standard deviations above averageaverage is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points
IQ 180 compared with nearby scores
| IQ | Percentile | Rarity | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 176 | 99.999979th | 1 in 4,940,195 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 178 | 99.99999th | 1 in 10,035,701 | Exceptionally gifted |
| 180 | 99.9999951st | 1 in 20,741,280 | Profoundly gifted |
| 182 | 99.9999977th | 1 in 43,613,157 | Profoundly gifted |
| 184 | 99.9999989th | 1 in 93,304,562 | Profoundly gifted |
Questions about an IQ of 180
Is 180 a high IQ?
Yes. 180 is a very high IQ: about 1 person in 20,741,280 scores this high or higher, which puts it at the 99.9999951st percentile. It is above the 130 that most definitions use for a high IQ, and at or above the 146 used by the Triple Nine Society for its 99.9th percentile entry.
What does 180 IQ mean?
It means a result 80 points, or 5.33 standard deviations, above the average for your age. On the levels used by gifted education researchers, 180 is profoundly gifted (180+).
Is 180 a genius IQ?
There is no official genius score. Lewis Terman's early Stanford-Binet labels put scores over 140 in a "near genius or genius" group, but modern tests dropped the word. 180 is very rare, yet achievements, not test scores, are what usually earn the word genius.
Can an online IQ test show a score of 180?
Some can show the number, but very few can measure it. Our own test reports up to 145, because a short online test doesn't have enough very hard questions, or enough high scorers in its data, to separate 180 from nearby scores. A supervised Wechsler or Stanford-Binet assessment is needed to confirm it.
What is an IQ of 180 on the Cattell scale?
About 228. The Cattell scale uses a standard deviation of 24 instead of 15, so the same result gives a bigger number. Going the other way, a Cattell score of 180 is only about 150 on the standard scale.
How many people have an IQ of 180?
On the standard bell curve, about 1 person in 20.7 million scores 180 or higher, roughly 396 people worldwide. Pearson's WISC-V technical report puts it the same way: one child in 20 million same-age peers.
Related: what counts as a good IQ score, the highest IQ in the world, famous people's IQs and the full IQ scale and range chart.
A full IQ score of 180 combines several skills. Our guides explain each one: fluid vs crystallized intelligence, abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning and processing speed, or try the free pattern recognition test.
Famous names are often linked to scores like 180, with or without a source. We checked the evidence behind Bill Gates' IQ, Elon Musk's IQ, Garry Kasparov's IQ, Terence Tao's IQ, Einstein's IQ, Isaac Newton's IQ, Nikola Tesla's IQ and Stephen Hawking's IQ.
Curious where you'd land?
The free Assessivo IQ test gives an estimated IQ and percentile in about 25 minutes. It reports scores up to 145; for anything higher, a supervised professional assessment is the only reliable route.
Take the free IQ testPortraits are pencil-style sketches by Assessivo, based on: Blaise Pascal after a copy of a portrait by François II Quesnel (about 1690), public domain.