Top 10 Highest IQ in India 2026

Ask 10 Indians who has the highest IQ in India and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. A clerk in Erode who filled notebooks with formulas no one had seen before. A woman in London who could multiply quicker than a computer. Two people with Indian roots who won the Fields Medal for mathematics.

They all share one thing. Very few of them ever took an IQ test that can be checked. The numbers on the internet are estimates, copied so many times that people take them as fact. What can be said about all these people is their achievements, which only keep growing. In February 2026 Manjul Bhargava became the first president of the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, and in July 2026 India’s team took 2 gold medals and 4 silver at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Shanghai.

So when putting this list together we went with what they have achieved over what their IQ might be, and we say where each IQ number came from if there is one. Here are the top 10 people with the highest IQ in India for 2026 and how they got that title.

What Sets India’s Sharpest Minds Apart

Everyone on this list shows their intelligence in a different way. Still, a few things keep coming up.

Achievement Before Age

Tulsi received his MSc at the age of 12. Visalini passed the Cisco CCNA exam at 10. Venkatesh started university at 13. When someone has the highest IQ in India, it usually shows at an early age.

Numbers as a Native Language

From Shakuntala Devi to Rajan Mahadevan and Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, India has produced some of the world’s greatest mental calculators. People love to see this type of intelligence because you can test it on the spot.

A Word on the IQ Figures

As mentioned above, the IQ numbers you see below are estimates. They were never officially tested and put on paper. News articles from 2011 claimed Visalini had an IQ of 225 without naming the test, and Ramanujan’s 185 was guessed decades after his death. So we based this list on accomplishments and mention the IQ only where one is commonly quoted.

Rigor That Travels

Most of these people started out in Indian classrooms and then went on to places like Cambridge, Princeton and Imperial College, or to the Mind Sports Olympiad. Their work has been checked by other smart people, which matters more than any score.

Top 10 Highest IQ in India at a Glance

Top 10 Highest IQ in India (2026)

Here are the 10 names that come up most when people talk about the highest IQ in India, ranked on what they have actually done.

1. Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887, in Erode in the Madras Presidency. With no training in advanced mathematics he found results in number theory while working as a clerk. After writing to G.H. Hardy in 1913 he traveled to Cambridge in April 1914.

He went on to compile nearly 3,900 results and became a Fellow of the Royal Society on May 2, 1918, at the age of 30. His last year of work is known as the “lost notebook”. It is 87 pages of formulas and was discovered in 1976. December 22 is National Mathematics Day in India in his honor. He died on April 26, 1920, at the age of 32. Most websites claim he had an IQ of 185, but there is no proof he was ever tested.

Key Highlights
✔ Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918
✔ Nearly 3,900 results compiled, largely self-taught
✔ The 1729 “taxicab number” story with Hardy
✔ December 22 observed as National Mathematics Day

Known for: Self-taught genius whose formulas still drive research a century later.

2. Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi was called the “human computer”. She was born on November 4, 1929, in Bangalore. She never studied mathematics formally but was doing mental math on stage as a child.

On June 18, 1980, at Imperial College London, she multiplied two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds. This went into the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records. Back in 1977 she found the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds at Southern Methodist University, while the UNIVAC computer took 62 seconds. She wrote more than a dozen books, and a movie about her life with Vidya Balan as the star came out in 2020. She passed away on April 21, 2013, at the age of 83. There is no verified IQ score for her.

Key Highlights
✔ 13-digit multiplication in 28 seconds, Guinness recognized
✔ 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds (1977)
✔ Author of Figuring: The Joy of Numbers
✔ Subject of the 2020 film Shakuntala Devi

Known for: The fastest human calculator of her era and a global ambassador for mental math.

3. Manjul Bhargava

Manjul Bhargava was born on August 8, 1974, in Hamilton, Ontario, to parents of Indian descent. He graduated from Harvard in 1996 and went on to get his PhD at Princeton in 2001 under Andrew Wiles. He teaches mathematics at Princeton today.

In 2014 he won the Fields Medal for “developing powerful new methods in the geometry of numbers”. He got the Padma Bhushan in 2015 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019. He also holds adjunct positions at TIFR, IIT Bombay and the University of Hyderabad. In February 2026 he became the first president of the National Museum of Mathematics in New York. No IQ score has ever been published for him.

Key Highlights
✔ Fields Medal, 2014
✔ Padma Bhushan, 2015; Fellow of the Royal Society, 2019
✔ Doctoral student of Andrew Wiles at Princeton
✔ First president of MoMath, New York, 2026

Known for: Reinventing the geometry of numbers and carrying Indian mathematical tradition to a global stage.

4. Akshay Venkatesh

Akshay Venkatesh was born in New Delhi in 1981 and moved to Perth, Australia, when he was 2 years old. At 11 he won a bronze medal at the International Physics Olympiad. At 12 he won silver at the Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad and bronze at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

At 13 he enrolled at the University of Western Australia, the youngest student it had ever accepted. He finished his 4-year honors degree in 3 years and received his PhD from Princeton in 2002. In 2018 he won the Fields Medal, the second person of Indian descent to do so after Bhargava. He has been at the Institute for Advanced Study since 2018. No published IQ score, but his olympiad record speaks for itself.

Key Highlights
✔ Fields Medal, 2018
✔ Olympiad medals in physics and mathematics before age 13
✔ Youngest-ever student at the University of Western Australia
✔ Permanent faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study

Known for: A prodigy who grew into one of the most versatile mathematicians of his generation.

5. K. Visalini

K. Visalini was born on May 23, 2000, in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. If you search for the most intelligent person in India you will see her name. Most websites will tell you her IQ is 225. That claim comes from news articles in 2011, and no test or testing body has ever been named, so it is a claim and not a verified score.

At around 10 she became the youngest person to pass Cisco’s CCNA exam. She is also said to be the youngest to receive the EXIN cloud computing certification. She left school in 9th grade to do her B.Tech at Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, finished it in 3 years and went on to complete an M.Tech and a PhD there. As of 2023 she was working on artificial intelligence for healthcare.

Key Highlights
✔ Reported IQ of 225, widely cited but unverified
✔ Youngest CCNA and EXIN cloud certification holder
✔ B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD in computer science from Kalasalingam
✔ TEDx speaker and AI/ML researcher

Known for: India’s most-cited “highest IQ” claim, backed by a real string of early certifications and degrees.

6. Tathagat Avatar Tulsi

Tathagat Avatar Tulsi was born on September 9, 1987, in Patna, Bihar. He finished school at 9, got his BSc at 11 and his MSc from Patna Science College at 12, which made national news in the 1990s.

He did his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science, finishing in August 2009 at the age of 21. IIT Bombay appointed him assistant professor in July 2010. After a long medical leave he was dismissed in 2019, and his appeal was rejected in 2021. Since January 2025 he has been an assistant professor at Ganga Devi Women’s College in Patna. Various websites give different IQ scores for Tulsi, but there is no record of any supervised test. Degrees at 11, 12 and 21 are proof enough for us.

Key Highlights
✔ High school at 9, BSc at 11, MSc at 12
✔ PhD in quantum computing from IISc at 21
✔ Assistant professor at IIT Bombay from 2010
✔ Back in teaching in Patna since January 2025

Known for: India’s best-known child prodigy in physics, and a career that is far from over.

7. Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash was born on October 13, 1999, and spent his childhood in Hyderabad. When he was 5 he suffered a severe head injury that kept him in bed for months, and that is when he started learning mental arithmetic. He graduated in mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 2020.

In August 2020 he won gold at the Mental Calculation World Championship, part of the Mind Sports Olympiad in London, and became the first Indian to do it. That earned him the title of world’s fastest human calculator. He holds 4 world records and close to 50 entries in the Limca Book of Records. He started Bhanzu, a platform that teaches kids math, and was named to Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 in 2022 and Forbes India 30 Under 30 in 2025. We don’t have any IQ score for him; he is measured in timed competition instead.

Key Highlights
✔ Mental Calculation World Championship gold, London, 2020
✔ Four world records and about 50 Limca records
✔ Founder of Bhanzu, a math ed-tech platform
✔ Forbes 30 Under 30 (Asia 2022, India 2025)

Known for: The world’s fastest human calculator, and a mission to make India love math.

8. Rajan Mahadevan

Rajan Mahadevan was born in 1957 in Madras, now Chennai, and spent his childhood in Mangalore. Scientists have studied his memory as closely as the public has celebrated it.

On July 5, 1981, he recited 31,811 digits of pi from memory and got into the 1984 Guinness Book of World Records. He did his master’s in clinical psychology at the University of Mysore in 1986. Later he moved to the US, where researchers found his digit span was nearly 10 times that of an average person. You can read about this in the 1993 book Memory Search by a Memorist. He is a Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Tennessee, and we don’t have an IQ score for him either.

Key Highlights
✔ 31,811 digits of pi recited in 1981
✔ Guinness Book of World Records, 1984 edition
✔ Subject of the 1993 study Memory Search by a Memorist
✔ Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Tennessee

Known for: One of the most studied memories in cognitive science.

9. Satyendra Nath Bose

Satyendra Nath Bose was born on January 1, 1894, in Calcutta. He studied at Presidency College and became a professor of physics at Dacca University in 1927.

In June 1924 he sent a short paper to Albert Einstein that derived Planck’s radiation law in a new way. Einstein translated it into German himself and got it published that August. The result, Bose-Einstein statistics, created the field of quantum statistics, and a whole class of particles, bosons, is named after him. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society and National Professor in 1958. He died on February 4, 1974. There is no IQ score for Bose. He earns this place because of that one idea.

Key Highlights
✔ Bose-Einstein statistics, 1924
✔ Bosons named in his honor
✔ Padma Vibhushan, 1954; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1958
✔ National Professor of India, 1958

Known for: The Indian physicist whose name is attached to half the particles in the universe.

10. Ashoke Sen

Ashoke Sen was born on July 15, 1956, in Kolkata. He studied at Presidency College, then IIT Kanpur and Stony Brook University. He worked for many years at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute in Allahabad and is now ICTS-Infosys Madhava Chair Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore.

Sen is one of the greatest string theorists alive. His work on S-duality set the direction of string theory in the 1990s. In 2012 he won the inaugural Fundamental Physics Prize along with 8 other people, each worth $3 million. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1998, got the Padma Bhushan in 2013 and the Dirac Medal in 2014. No IQ score is available for Sen either. He stands on the problems he solved.

Key Highlights
✔ Inaugural Fundamental Physics Prize, 2012
✔ S-duality and the Sen conjecture in string theory
✔ Fellow of the Royal Society, 1998
✔ Padma Bhushan, 2013; Dirac Medal, 2014

Known for: India’s foremost string theorist and a pillar of ICTS Bangalore.

How India Measures and Nurtures High Intelligence

So who will take the next spot for the highest IQ in India? It takes more than a test to find out.

Mensa India

To join Mensa you need to score in the top 2 percent on an approved test. Mensa India has more than 1,700 members who have done that. It has also mentored thousands of gifted children from poorer families through Project Dhruv and Tribal Mensa.

The Olympiad Pipeline

India has a great organization that trains its olympiad students, the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai. In 2025 the team scored a record 193 points and brought back 3 gold medals from the IMO. This year India did well again with 2 golds and 4 silvers at IMO 2026 in Shanghai.

Early-College Paths

Like mentioned earlier, Tulsi did his degrees at 11 and 12, and Visalini finished her B.Tech in less time than normal, both inside the regular university system. The problem is that support often fades once the media hype dies down.

Research Institutes as Magnets

Institutes like IISc, TIFR, ICTS and the IITs help keep these minds in the country or bring them back. Bhargava’s adjunct positions and Sen’s chair at ICTS are two examples.

The Limits of IQ Testing

An IQ score only gives you a single number based on one day’s performance in one exam. It can’t tell you whether someone can see a problem nobody else has noticed. That is why we look at achievements to find the highest IQ in India.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Highest IQ in India

Who has the highest IQ in India?

As of today there is no proper answer. K. Visalini’s reported 225 is the most quoted figure but it has never been verified. If we go by achievements, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Manjul Bhargava and Akshay Venkatesh lead the list.

Who is the most intelligent person in India today?

Among living Indians, Manjul Bhargava, Akshay Venkatesh and Ashoke Sen have the strongest records, and Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash is the world’s fastest human calculator. It’s hard to name one most intelligent person in India because it depends on how you define intelligence.

Did Shakuntala Devi or Ramanujan ever take an IQ test?

No. Ramanujan died in 1920 and the 185 people quote for him is a later estimate. Shakuntala Devi was studied by psychologist Arthur Jensen in 1988, but again no IQ score was published.

How can someone in India get an official IQ score?

You can take an IQ test conducted by Mensa India. If you score in the top 2 percent you can become a member. You can also visit a clinical psychologist who will give you a standardized test like the Wechsler scales. Many online tests exist but they aren’t a substitute for the real thing.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say who has the highest IQ in India. But one thing is sure: the country has produced a clerk who changed mathematics, a woman who beat a computer, two Fields Medalists and a physicist with a class of particles named after him.

IQ scores will always be debatable, but what people achieve cannot be. With Bhanu Prakash, Venkatesh and a new generation of olympiad medalists still at work, this list of India’s sharpest minds is far from finished.