Most people of exceptional intelligence will remain unknown to the public. We can prove this with simple mathematics. A person of IQ 140 (considered profoundly gifted) is in the 99.6th percentile. This means that their IQ is greater than 99.6% of all the population. In other words, people of IQ 140 or greater represent about 0.4% of the population. So, in the United States with approximately 334,000,000 people, there are approximately 0.004 x 334,000,000 = 1,336,000 people of IQ 140 or greater. But how many famous people are there in the United States? Probably, there are only a few thousand people in America who are known to a major portion of the American public. So the overwhelming number of profoundly gifted people (probably less than 0.1%) will ever be known to the public.
So, how do people become household names? For a person of exceptional intelligence to achieve significant public recognition, they need at least three more attributes: a deep passionately held goal, an unrelenting capacity for work, and opportunity. In research for his book, Entrepreneurial Genius: The Power of Passion, psychologist Gene Landrum found that the strongest commonality among the most successful entrepreneurs was their passionate commitment to a particular goal. This passion fuelled a capacity for work that enabled the entrepreneur to immerse himself or herself in their enterprise 24/7. When Jeff Bezos was building Amazon.com, his employees said that he never went home. Bill Gates slept in the Microsoft office.
While passion and an exceptional work ethic are within the control of someone pursuing a goal, the one element that is beyond the control of most people is opportunity. Profoundly gifted people in Third World Countries or the intellectually gifted in First World Countries who come from intellectually bankrupt family environments often travel through middle age without finding a fulfilling outlet for their innate intellectual gifts.
In 1751, the English poet Thomas Gray wrote, Elegy in a Country Churchyard. While standing amongst the tombstones in the church cemetery of a modest rural village, he is immersed in the pastoral sounds of lowing cattle, a plowman returning from a day’s labor, and the hoot of an owl announcing the encroaching darkness. He reflects on the unsung heroes, whose lives played out in obscure hamlets and passed, uncelebrated, in spite of their latent potential for historic achievement. In stanzas 13 through 16 of this 33-stanza poem (see below) he notes that these simple, unheralded villagers, denied access to education and knowledge by their poverty, may have taken to their grave the talent of a John Milton or the political potential of an Oliver Cromwell. Instead, they languish, gifts unrevealed, like a beautiful gem–its beauty unseen in an undiscovered ocean cave–or a fragrant flower unsniffed in a remote desert dune.
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes,
Indeed, as Gray asserts, the luck of time, location, and economic status is a wild card in the trajectory of our lives. Those who live in a country that values intelligence and nurtures giftedness in special programs benefit from the many achievements that come from the sector of society that Huxley described as the “alpha children.” However, even in countries that provide excellent opportunities of intellectual accomplishment, only a fraction of these “alpha children” will be known to the public.
