Marilyn Vos Savant is the undisputed Queen of the world's highest recorded IQ (228.) For the past 20 years, Savant has answered readers' trivia and logic questions. She lives a comfy existence in Manhattan with her husband, Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart. Marilyn vos Savant's intelligence brought the St. Louis-born writer instant celebrity and earned her the sobriquet "the smartest person in the world." Although vos Savant's family was aware of her exceptionally high I.Q. scores on the Stanford-Benet test when she was 10 years old (she is also recognized as having the highest I.Q. score ever recorded by a child), her parents decided to withhold the information from the public in order to avoid commercial exploitation and assure her a normal childhood.
The possessor of immensely bright mind soon got bored with college and left Washington University after two years to make a career in stocks, real estate, and investment. Her real interest had always been in becoming a writer, but she realized that she first needed to establish a financial base with which to support herself. Within five years her personal investments afforded her the financial independence to become a full-time writer. She now writes novels, short stories, and magazine and newspaper pieces, mostly political satire, under a pseudonym.
Her attempt at living anonymous life ended in 1985 when The Guinness Book of World Records obtained her I.Q. test scores from the Mega Society. It is a group whose membership is restricted to those with only the highest of the high-I.Q. scores. The members' I.Q. scores must be higher than 99.999 percent of the general population. Its membership has been limited to as few as 30. Most people's intelligence scores fall within a narrow range on either side of the "normal" score of 100; by contrast, vos Savant's I.Q. score is more than double that of a person with normal intellect and 88 points higher than the genius level.
With the publication of her I.Q. scores in Guinness, vos Savant became the focus of media attention. Hardly the stereotypical stuffy super genius, the outgoing, fun-loving vos Savant became a favorite on the talk-show circuit.
