This 11-year-old has higher IQ than Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking

Arnav Sharma scored 162 in an IQ test

Arnav Sharma, 11, has scored 162 in an IQ test, which puts him two point higher than geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Sharma who hails from Reading, England passed the IQ test with zero preparation and had never seen what a typical paper looked like before taking it.



His exam result, which measures verbal reasoning ability, puts him in the nation's top one per cent in terms of IQ level, reported The Independent.

"The Mensa test is quite hard and not many people pass it so do not expect to pass," Arnav said. "I took the exam at the Salvation centre and it took about two and a half hours. There were about seven or eight people there. A couple were children but the rest were adults. It was what I thought it would be.”

When Sharma was asked if he was anxious before taking the test, he said "I had no preparation at all for the exam but I was not nervous. My family were surprised but they were also very happy when I told them about the result.”

Meesha Dhamija Sharma, the mother of the 11-year-old said she became aware of his abilities when she took him to India as a toddler. “At one-and-a-half years old I took him to India for a holiday to see his grandparents, his grandmother told me about him and said Arnav is going to do very well with his studies,” she said. “I did not trust her, I just thought she was saying it to make me happy, but she was right.”

Sharma's mathematical prowess became apparent when he was only two years old. “He was counting up to more than 100. That was when I stopped teaching him because I came to know that there is no end to his numbers," said his mother.

However, the 11-year-old's talents are not limited to number. He also has a passion for singing and dancing, even reaching the semi-finals for Reading's Got Talent for Dancing with a Bollywood act when he was only eight.

Sharma says his hobbies include coding, badminton, piano, swimming and reading. He also possesses unusually good geographical knowledge with the ability to name all the capitals of the world.



A spokesperson for Mensa heaped praised on Sharma for the achievement, saying: “It is a high mark which only a small percentage of people in the country will achieve".

Mensa is one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, and the only way to join is to prove your IQ is in the top two per cent. The global organisation's mission Its mission is to “identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity”.

This story originally appeared on The Independent