Ever get into an argument about who the smartest female in the world actually is? It usually starts with someone dropping a name like Marie Curie or maybe a modern physics prodigy. Then someone else brings up IQ scores.
Honestly, it’s a mess.
If you look at the record books, one name has sat at the top for decades: Marilyn vos Savant. Back in the mid-80s, the Guinness Book of World Records listed her as having an IQ of 228. That is an absurd number. For context, an "average" person sits around 100. Einstein was estimated to be somewhere in the 160s. So, on paper, Marilyn isn’t just smart; she’s in a different zip code of cognitive function.
But here’s the kicker. Guinness actually retired the "Highest IQ" category in 1990. Why? Because they realized that trying to pin down one single person as the "smartest" is kinda like trying to pick the "best" song ever written. It’s too subjective. IQ tests are great at measuring certain types of logic and pattern recognition, but they don't capture the whole picture of human brilliance.
The legend of Marilyn vos Savant and the 228 score
Marilyn’s story is basically the ultimate "what if" of the intellectual world. She was just a ten-year-old girl in St. Louis when she took the Stanford-Binet test. Her mental age was recorded at 22 years and 10 months.
Think about that for a second.
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While other kids were playing tag, her brain was functioning at the level of a post-grad. She didn't become a nuclear physicist or a world leader, though. Instead, she became famous for her "Ask Marilyn" column in Parade magazine. People would send her the most insane logic puzzles, and she’d dismantle them with ease.
The most famous example was the Monty Hall Problem. It was a probability puzzle based on a game show: three doors, one car, two goats. Marilyn said you should always switch doors after the host opens one. Thousands of people—including hundreds of PhDs—wrote in to tell her she was wrong. They were arrogant. They were loud.
And she was right.
Why IQ isn't the only way to measure the smartest female in the world
If we only look at test scores, we miss the women who are actually reshaping the way we understand reality. Take Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski. She’s often called the "next Einstein," a label that honestly probably puts a ton of pressure on her.
Pasterski built her own single-engine airplane in her dad's garage. She was 14.
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By the time she was a grad student at Harvard, her work on "celestial holography" was being cited by Stephen Hawking. That’s not just "smart" in a trivia sense; that’s "changing the laws of physics" smart.
Then there’s Judit Polgár. In the world of chess—a field that, let’s be real, has been a total boys' club for centuries—she is a god. She’s the only woman to ever reach the world's top ten. She beat Garry Kasparov. She beat Magnus Carlsen. Her intelligence isn't about answering a multiple-choice question on a test; it’s about calculating millions of possible futures on a 64-square board in real-time.
The science of "Smart" in 2026
Recent research from 2025 and 2026 is starting to flip the script on how we even define intelligence. A major study out of Georgia State University recently found that when you measure "metacognition"—basically, how well you know what you don't know—women often outperform men.
They found that women were much better at knowing when to be confident and when to double-check their work. In high-stakes environments, that’s actually a much "smarter" trait than just having raw processing power.
It turns out the smartest female in the world might not be the one with the highest score on a paper test, but the one who can navigate complex, uncertain systems without letting ego get in the way.
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Notable figures often in the conversation:
- Jennifer Doudna: Co-developer of CRISPR. She literally figured out how to edit the code of life.
- Fabiola Gianotti: The first female Director-General of CERN. She runs the Large Hadron Collider.
- Katherine Freese: A theoretical astrophysicist who is basically the world's leading expert on dark matter.
What most people get wrong about high intelligence
We have this weird habit of expecting "geniuses" to be perfect or to have all the answers. Marilyn vos Savant once said that IQ is just "capacity"—like the size of a gas tank. It doesn't tell you where the car is going or how well the driver handles the turns.
Being the smartest female in the world is a heavy title. For many of these women, the hardest part isn't the math or the logic; it’s the social expectation. When Marilyn corrected those mathematicians on the Monty Hall problem, they didn't just disagree with her math; they attacked her for being a "columnist" and a woman.
Intelligence isn't just about the brain; it’s about the backbone to stick to your guns when everyone else is shouting that you're wrong.
How to apply "high-IQ" thinking to your own life
You don't need a 228 IQ to use your brain better. Honestly, most of what makes someone like Marilyn or Sabrina Pasterski successful is a specific set of habits.
First, they read everything. Marilyn was famously reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a kid. Not because she had to, but because she was curious. Curiosity is the engine of intelligence.
Second, they embrace the counterintuitive. The Monty Hall problem is hard because our "gut" tells us one thing while the math tells us another. The smartest people are the ones willing to tell their "gut" to sit down and be quiet while they look at the data.
Actionable steps for sharper thinking:
- Vary your sources: Read things you disagree with. It forces your brain to build new neural pathways to process "wrong" information.
- Practice logic puzzles: Not for the answers, but for the process. Get comfortable with being stumped.
- Audit your confidence: Ask yourself, "Why do I think I'm right about this?" If the answer is "I just feel it," you're probably falling into a cognitive trap.
- Look for the "Third Door": Like the Monty Hall problem, life often feels like a binary choice. High-intelligence thinkers look for the variable that everyone else is ignoring.
There is no single "smartest" person. There is only the ongoing, messy, brilliant work of women pushing the boundaries of what we think is possible. Whether it's through a chess board, a telescope, or a magazine column, the real measure of intelligence is what you do with the "tank" you've been given.