In my previous post about the Ukrainian artist Ivan Marchuk, it was noted that he was included into the Top 100 Living Geniuses list. Curious about the list, I checked it out.
Compiled in 2007, the list ranked the greatest living thinkers of our time, no less.
The list was compiled by a panel of six experts in creativity and innovation from Creators Synectics, a global consultants firm.
The company emailed 4,000 Britons in the summer of 2007 asking them to nominate up to 10 living people they considered geniuses. Each nominee was then awarded scores out of ten against criteria which included: paradigm shifting; popular acclaim; intellectual power; achievement and cultural importance. It comes as no surprise that proportionately more Brits got nominated than people from other countries.
My understanding is that the 4000 Brits were chosen randomly and do not necessarily have any expertise in evaluating human genius.
Judge for yourself. Here is the 2007 genius list:
| 1= | Albert Hoffman | (Swiss) | Chemist | 27 |
| 1= | Tim Berners-Lee | (British) | Computer Scientist | 27 |
| 3 | George Soros | (American) | Investor & Philanthropist | 25 |
| 4 | Matt Groening | (American) | Satirist & Animator | 24 |
| 5= | Nelson Mandela | (South African) | Politician & Diplomat | 23 |
| 5= | Frederick Sanger | (British) | Chemist | 23 |
| 7= | Dario Fo | (Italian) | Writer & Dramatist | 22 |
| 7= | Steven Hawking | (British) | Physicist | 22 |
| 9= | Oscar Niemeyer | (Brazilian) | Architect | 21 |
| 9= | Philip Glass | (American) | Composer | 21 |
| 9= | Grigory Perelman | (Russian) | Mathematician | 21 |
| 12= | Andrew Wiles | (British) | Mathematician | 20 |
| 12= | Li Hongzhi | (Chinese) | Spiritual Leader | 20 |
| 12= | Ali Javan | (Iranian) | Engineer | 20 |
| 15= | Brian Eno | (British) | Composer | 19 |
| 15= | Damian Hirst | (British) | Artist | 19 |
| 15= | Daniel Tammet | (British) | Savant & Linguist | 19 |
| 18 | Nicholson Baker | (American | Writer | 18 |
| 19 | Daniel Barenboim | (N/A) | Musician | 17 |
| 20= | Robert Crumb | (American) | Artist | 16 |
| 20= | Richard Dawkins | (British) | Biologist and philosopher | 16 |
| 20= | Larry Page & Sergey Brin | (American) | Publishers | 16 |
| 20= | Rupert Murdoch | (American) | Publisher | 16 |
| 20= | Geoffrey Hill | (British) | Poet | 16 |
| 25 | Garry Kasparov | (Russian) | Chess Player | 15 |
| 26= | The Dalai Lama | (Tibetan) | Spiritual Leader | 14 |
| 26= | Steven Spielberg | (American) | Film maker | 14 |
| 26= | Hiroshi Ishiguro | (Japanese) | Roboticist | 14 |
| 26= | Robert Edwards | (British) | Pioneer of IVF treatment | 14 |
| 26= | Seamus Heaney | (Irish) | Poet | 14 |
| 31 | Harold Pinter | (British) | Writer & Dramatist | 13 |
| 32= | Flossie Wong-Staal | (Chinese) | Bio-technologist | 12 |
| 32= | Bobby Fischer | (American) | Chess Player | 12 |
| 32= | Prince | (American) | Musician | 12 |
| 32= | Henrik Gorecki | (Polish) | Composer | 12 |
| 32= | Avram Noam Chomski | (American) | Philosopher & linguist | 12 |
| 32= | Sebastian Thrun | (German) | Probabilistic roboticist | 12 |
| 32= | Nima Arkani Hamed | (Canadian) | Physicist | 12 |
| 32= | Margaret Turnbull | (American) | Astrobiologist | 12 |
| 40= | Elaine Pagels | (American) | Historian | 11 |
| 40= | Enrique Ostrea | (Philippino) | Pediatrics & neonatology | 11 |
| 40= | Gary Becker | (American) | Economist | 11 |
| 43= | Mohammed Ali | (American) | Boxer | 10 |
| 43= | Osama Bin Laden | (Saudi) | Islamicist | 10 |
| 43= | Bill Gates | (American) | Businessman | 10 |
| 43= | Philip Roth | (American) | Writer | 10 |
| 43= | James West | (American) | Invented the foil electrical microphone | 10 |
| 43= | Tuan Vo-Dinh | (Vietnamese) | Bio-Medical Scientist | 10 |
| 49= | Brian Wilson | (American) | Musician | 9 |
| 49= | Stevie Wonder | (American) | Singer songwriter | 9 |
| 49= | Vint Cerf | (American) | Computer scientist | 9 |
| 49= | Henry Kissinger | (American) | Diplomat and politician | 9 |
| 49= | Richard Branson | (British) | Publicist | 9 |
| 49= | Pardis Sabeti | (Iranian) | Biological anthropologist | 9 |
| 49= | Jon de Mol | (Dutch) | Television producer | 9 |
| 49= | Meryl Streep | (American) | Actress | 9 |
| 49= | Margaret Attwood | (Canadian) | Writer | 9 |
| 58= | Placido Domingo | (Spanish) | Singer | 8 |
| 58= | John Lasseter | (American) | Digital Animator | 8 |
| 58= | Shunpei Yamazaki | (Japanese) | Computer scientist & physicist | 8 |
| 58= | Jane Goodall | (British) | Ethologist & Anthropologist | 8 |
| 58= | Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri | (Indian) | Historian | 8 |
| 58= | John Goto | (British) | Photographer | 8 |
| 58= | Paul McCartney | (British) | Musician | 8 |
| 58= | Stephen King | (American) | Writer | 8 |
| 58= | Leonard Cohen | (Canadian) | Poet & musician | 8 |
| 67= | Aretha Franklin | (American) | Musician | 7 |
| 67= | David Bowie | (British) | Musician | 7 |
| 67= | Emily Oster | (American) | Economist | 7 |
| 67= | Steve Wozniak | (American) | Engineer and co-founder of Apple Computers | 7 |
| 67= | Martin Cooper | (American) | Inventor of the cell phone | 7 |
| 72= | George Lucas | (American) | Film maker | 6 |
| 72= | Niles Rogers | (American) | Musician | 6 |
| 72= | Hans Zimmer | (German) | Composer | 6 |
| 72= | John Williams | (American) | Composer | 6 |
| 72= | Annette Baier | (New Zealander) | Philosopher | 6 |
| 72= | Dorothy Rowe | (British) | Psychologist | 6 |
| 72= | Ivan Marchuk | (Ukrainian) | Artist & sculptor | 6 |
| 72= | Robin Escovado | (American) | Composer | 6 |
| 72= | Mark Dean | (American) | Inventor & computer scientist | 6 |
| 72= | Rick Rubin | (American) | Musician & producer | 6 |
| 72= | Stan Lee | (American) | Publisher | 6 |
| 83= | David Warren | (Australian) | Engineer | 5 |
| 83= | Jon Fosse | (Norwegian) | Writer & dramatist | |
| 83= | Gjertrud Schnackenberg | (American) | Poet | 5 |
| 83= | Graham Linehan | (Irish) | Writer & dramatist | 5 |
| 83= | JK Rowling | (British) | Writer | 5 |
| 83= | Ken Russell | (British) | Film maker | 5 |
| 83= | Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov | (Russian) | Small arms designer | 5 |
| 83= | Erich Jarvis | (American) | Neurobiologist | 5 |
| 91=. | Chad Varah | (British) | Founder of Samaritans | 4 |
| 91= | Nicolas Hayek | (Swiss) | Businessman and founder of Swatch | 4 |
| 91= | Alastair Hannay | (British) | Philosopher | 4 |
| 94= | Patricia Bath | (American) | Ophthalmologist | |
| 94= | Thomas A. Jackson | (American) | Aerospace engineer | 3 |
| 94= | Dolly Parton | (American) | Singer | 3 |
| 94= | Morissey | (British) | Singer | 3 |
| 94= | Michael Eavis | (British) | Organiser of Glastonbury | 3 |
| 94= | Ranulph Fiennes | (British) | Adventurer | 3 |
| 100=. | Quentin Tarantino | (American) | Filmmaker | 2 |
Honestly, I was slightly disappointed to find Damian Hirst, whose “art” I abhor, pretty high on the list. That is to say nothing about, of all people, Osama bin Laden, categorized as an Islamicist by occupation.
I don’t know whether or not The Telegraph attempted to engage Creators Synectics to compile similar lists between 2007 and now, and if yes, then what some randomly chosen 4000 Brits decided. The world and Brits have changed since.
Contra Spem Spero... Et Rideo 