Anne Roe studied 64 of the best scientists in the US in 1952 (20 biologists, 22 physicists and 22 social scientists), including Nobel Prize winners. Her findings regarding global IQ can be summarized as shown in the table below.

The results according to the verbal, spatial and mathematical subscales are:

As one can see, the overall results were very high, in the top 0.015%, but the results varied substantially according to field and subtest.

Biologists and psychologists performed better in verbal and mathematical tests, obtaining relatively lower scores in the spatial test. Anthropologists performed better on the verbal test, obtaining lower results in the mathematical test and lower still in the spatial test. Although most physicists did not undergo the mathematical test, one can reasonably assume that, perhaps because of specific training in this type of thinking during their education, they would achieve their best performance in such a test, being their second best performance in the verbal test and the spatial test the worst.Among biologists, geneticists and biochemists performed relatively better on the nonverbal test while the other biologists obtained relatively better results on the verbal test. Theoretical physicists showed some tendency to perform relatively better in the verbal test while the experimental ones stood out more in the space test. Among social scientists, experimental psychologists are relatively better off in spatial or mathematical tests than anthropologists.

It is interesting to note that the mean of 154 observed for the total sample is very close to the ratio of 1 for every 4000 (equivalent to an IQ of 156) found by Galton (1869) and to the mean IQ of 155 obtained by Cox (1926) in their studies of geniuses. This suggests a relative stability for the mean level of intelligence for the extremely successful thinkers across domains, countries and time.

References

• Cox, C. M. (1926). The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses. Volume II. Genetic Studies of Genius. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press (Reprinted in 1959).
• Galton, F. (1869). Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences. London: Macmillan, p. 1 (Reprinted, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999).
• Roe, A. (1953). ''The making of a scientist.'' New York, NY: Dodd, Mead.