When you think of the highest IQ in the world, you might picture the likes of Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Leonardo da Vinci, but in reality, they're far from the top.
Modern testing for IQ was only introduced when French psychologist Alfred Binet and psychiatrist Théodore Simon coined the Binet–Simon Intelligence test in 1905, meaning anyone from before then was only marked posthumously.
Still, that hasn't stopped everyone from William Shakespeare to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Wolsey to Voltaire, from being slapped with some lofty IQs
The official highest IQ in the world belongs to Marilyn vos Savant, who is in the Guinness Book of Records for her impressive 228.
Advert
After vos Savant earned the honor in 1985, the Guinness World Records has since stopped recording IQs due to controversy.
Speaking of controversy, in steps South Korean scientist YoungHoon Kim, who is classed as having the world's highest IQ by many. While Kim dines out on the fact that he has the world's highest IQ and claims to have a jaw-dropping 276, others aren't as convinced.
Kim is a member of the Giga Society, which only has nine members and pitches itself as an exclusive club for those with IQs over 190, although it took issue with a Vice article calling out the certified brainbox.
Away from conspiracy theory Reddit threads and skeptics sharing their own musings on Kim's IQ, he's recently been called out for his views on religion. As a devout Christian, he claims that God is 100% real, and more than that, God and Jesus are seemingly the same person.
More than this, YoungHoon Kim thinks he knows what happens after we die.
We know there are plenty of philosophical thoughts on the matter, while this has also crossed over into science as people try to find a definitive answer to the idea of life after death.
Offering his own thoughts on the matter, Christian Today reports how Kim once said on X: "As the world’s highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, the way and the truth and the life.”
Fancying himself as something of an Elon Musk with his own Neuralink, Kim is the CEO of NeuroStory, which is a South Korean company that uses AI, machine learning, big data, and nanotechnology to develop digital brain health solutions.
As well as calling Christ his 'logic', Kim previously posted a video saying: "Our consciousness is not just brain activity, but it is something deeper.
“Quantum physics says that information never disappears. Never. It only changes in form. If our consciousness is quantum information, it may continue after the body is gone.”
Comparing our brain to a local device, the afterlife is supposedly akin to cloud storage: "Quantum entanglement suggests that our consciousness is part of a bigger system beyond the physical world. If reality is part of something bigger, then death is not the end, but a transition."
Ultimately, he sees science and faith as partners instead of opposing forces, concluding: "Science is growing now, and we are learning more about consciousness and reality. Our death is not destruction, but change and shift. Humanity will keep searching for the truth about what comes after."