12-year-old Indian-origin girl from Essex, Lydia Sebastian has achieved the maximum score in the Mensa IQ test, surpassing physicists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. She scored 162, the maximum score for under-18s. Both Hawking and Einstein are thought to have an IQ of 160.
Lydia completed the Cattell III B paper supervised by Mensa, the society for people with high IQs, with minutes to spare at Birkbeck College, London. The paper with150 questions challenged her language skills, including analogies and definitions, and her sense of logic.
In an interview with The Guardian, Lydia, who was competing with much older people during this IQ test, said, “At first, I was really nervous but once I started, it was much easier than I expected it to be and then I relaxed. I gave it my best shot really.”
Lydia, a student of Colchester County High School in Essex, was born to Arun Sebastian, a radiologist at Colchester General Hospital, and Erika Kottiath, associate director at Barclays Bank.
A proud father said his wife encouraged Lydia to do the tests during her school holidays after she’d spent a year talking about them. “When I heard she had the maximum possible mark, I was overwhelmed and so was my wife. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking got an IQ of 160. To be honest, I didn’t really believe it.”
Lydia has read all seven of the Harry Potter books three times. She has been playing the violin since the age of four. She started talking at the age of six months.
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To be fair, Mensa score on the Cattell Scale and Einstein’s fabled 160 is expressed as his score on the Stanford Binet scale. 160 on Cattell is only about 140 on Stanford-Binet, so she doesn’t have an IQ higher than Einstein on the basis of this score. However it’s hard to be definitive because she’s topped out on the Children’s Scale and may actually have a higher IQ than be currently measured due to her age. When she’s a grown adult and does another Mensa test, if she can score 190+ on it then she will be equal to Einstein. On this one, not very comprehensive measure of ‘intelligence’. Clever girl, but too early to start calling her ‘Einstein II’.
The girl is 12 …..
She is a genius by any measure….
Nicely said Ruby. I do appreciate how the article doesn’t imply that she was more intelligent than anyone. I believe this is the first IQ related article I have read that has correctly separated intelligence and IQ. The different tests is a huge point, and as you said, I would be very interested to see what she scores as an adult when the handicap flattens off. I understand why the handicap score is in place (as the test is only suppose to work for people amongst their peers), but it really destroys a true measure of superior intelligence. She does sound very intelligent (especially her schooling ability) and I am sure she will have a huge IQ as an adult, but is her early cognitive maturity a predictor of a genius, so to speak, or someone who is very equipped to schooling and matured very early. If simply early, she is indeed academically advanced, but this isn’t a guarantee that her IQ score will progress linearly with her age.
The other issue with this is, Einstein was seen as overly intelligent because he stood out from his peers by an immense amount. So when he applied himself academically, he really was on a level on his own (almost). These days, that’s very improbable. We have a relatively huge population of elite thinkers that apply themselves academically. So, as you said, it is too early to call her Einstein II, but maybe she will surpass our currently most academically elite. She definitely has more potential than many, many others!
What did you get?
Congrats! I hope you will use this powerful mind for something good for the world, and not lose the talent with some companies to earn only money ..
What was your test score
Wow, she has beaten Einstein and Hawking by a test those two scientists never took! Well done. Is this even relative possible? I always read about wonder kids getting a lot of IQ points – yet non of these actually achieve anything in science. So the bigger IQ the better – but if you want to be a scientist the lower IQ the better? Well, I’ve scored above 160 and no, I am not a genious. I actually take it like Hawking does: IQ-scale is something for the stupid people.
Not bad, I achieved 142 in Mensa IQ Test few years ago.