What was George Washington’s IQ?
Catharine Cox estimated IQs for eight presidents in 1926. Jefferson thought Washington’s mind “great and powerful, without being of the very first order.”
George Washington was never given an IQ test; he left school at about fifteen, then commanded the Continental Army, presided over the Constitutional Convention and served as the first president. The IQ level that circulates for him, 125 to 140, is not a score but four estimates that Catharine Cox made in 1926 from records of his life to age 26.
George Washington’s estimated IQ
- One of only eight presidents in Catharine Cox’s 1926 study of 301 historical figures; her four estimates for him, tabulated in Table 1 of Simonton (2006), are 125, 130, 135 and 140.
- In the same table Simonton rates his Intellectual Brilliance at +0.3, where 0 is the average president and Jefferson’s +3.1 is the highest, and his Openness at 14 out of 100 against Jefferson’s 99.1; that gap is one reason the range stops at 145.
- His formal education ended at about fifteen; at sixteen he accompanied Lord Fairfax’s surveyors on a month-long trek through the Shenandoah Valley, and at seventeen he was appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County.
- Appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army on June 15, 1775, chosen president of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and elected first US president unanimously in 1789 and again in 1792.
- Thomas Jefferson, after about thirty years’ acquaintance, wrote on January 2, 1814 that his mind was “great and powerful, without being of the very first order.”
Every figure here is a retrospective estimate from biography, not a test result. Cox’s numbers cover only his first 26 years, and Simonton notes that her corrected scores “may be overestimates”; the top five points of this range are a judgment about his adult record and should be read as one.
- Born
- February 22, 1732, Popes Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia
- Died
- December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Virginia, aged 67
- Field
- Statesman, general and surveyor
- Education
- Formal schooling ended at about fifteen; no college
- Command
- Commander in chief of the Continental Army from June 15, 1775
- Office
- First US president, 1789–1797; unanimously elected in 1789 and 1792
- Known for
- Presiding over the 1787 Constitutional Convention; the 1796 Farewell Address
- In Cox’s 1926 study?
- Yes — four IQ estimates: 125, 130, 135 and 140
What an IQ of 125–145 actually means
Set the claim aside for a moment. If someone genuinely scored in this range, here is what that would represent.
Average is 100 by construction, and about two-thirds of people fall between 85 and 115. Take the test to place your own score on this scale.
| Score range | Classification | Share of people | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85 – 114 | Average | ~68% | The range most people fall into. |
| 115 – 129 | Above average | ~13.6% | Roughly one person in seven. |
| 130 – 144 | Gifted | ~2% | The threshold most high-IQ societies use. |
| Above 144 | Highly gifted | ~0.1% | Figures above this range are extrapolated from the curve rather than measured. |
Percentages are approximate and describe a normal distribution. The same number means different things on tests with different standard deviations.
Thirty questions gives you a measured position on this exact scale — your score, your percentile and the ability breakdown behind it.
Find out in 30 minutes →Who George Washington was
George Washington was born on February 22, 1732 (February 11, 1731, Old Style) at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His formal education ended when he was about fifteen, after an irregular schooling under different schoolmasters and tutors; his father died when he was eleven, and unlike his older half-brothers he was never sent to school in England. He did not go on to college, and he later spoke of a “defective education.” He took to mathematics and surveying instead. In 1748, at sixteen, he accompanied Lord Fairfax’s surveyors on a month-long trek through the Shenandoah Valley, and in 1749, at seventeen, he was appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County. As a teenager he also compiled more than a hundred rules of social conduct, the Rules of Civility.
Washington fought at Fort Necessity in 1754, married in 1759 and inherited Mount Vernon in 1761. He was one of Virginia’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress, which appointed him commander in chief of the Continental Army on June 15, 1775. His army attacked at Trenton in 1776 and Princeton in 1777, and the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781. In 1787 he was chosen president of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a post the National Park Service says he took on reluctantly.
The Electoral College elected him the first US president unanimously on February 4, 1789, and again on December 5, 1792. He was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, and served two terms, 1789–1797. His Farewell Address, first printed in David C. Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796, announced that he would not seek a third term and warned against the rise of political parties and sectionalism. The Library of Congress notes that the ideas were Washington’s but that Alexander Hamilton wrote a large part of the text and James Madison had drafted an earlier version in 1792, so it is weak evidence of his own prose.
Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799, aged 67, of an acute throat infection. Two of his contemporaries left blunt assessments of his mind. Encyclopedia Virginia records John Adams’s complaint that he was unlearned for his station. Jefferson, writing to Walter Jones on January 2, 1814, called his mind “great and powerful, without being of the very first order” and “slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.” That describes judgment rather than speed or output, and in Simonton’s data the IQ estimates share only about a tenth of their variance with expert ratings of presidential performance.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed August 2026
George Washington: the documented record
The estimate above rests on this record. Every entry here is a matter of public fact, which is more than can be said for the number itself.
- 1732Born on February 22 at Popes Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia (February 11, 1731, Old Style).
- 1748At sixteen, accompanies Lord Fairfax’s surveyors on a month-long trek through the Shenandoah Valley.
- 1749Appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County at seventeen.
- 1775Appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress on June 15.
- 1781The British surrender at Yorktown.
- 1787Chosen president of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
- 1789Unanimously elected first US president on February 4; inaugurated on April 30 at Federal Hall in New York City.
- 1792Unanimously elected to a second term on December 5.
- 1796The Farewell Address is first printed on September 19 in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser.
- 1799Dies at Mount Vernon on December 14, aged 67.
Where the 125–140 figure came from
Following a claim back to its first appearance is the part almost nobody does — and it is what most people are actually asking.
George Washington’s IQ has a traceable source, which sets it apart from the invented figures that circulate for some other presidents. In 1926 Catharine Cox, in The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses, estimated IQs for 301 historical figures from the records of their early lives, because none of them could be tested; eight were US presidents, Washington among them. Dean Keith Simonton tabulated her figures in Table 1 of “Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership” (Political Psychology 27(4), 2006, pages 511–526). For Washington the table gives 125, 130, 135 and 140: two periods of his life, birth to 17 and 18 to 26, each with an uncorrected and a corrected score.
Any George Washington IQ level you see online is usually one of those numbers, with or without its label. IQ Caddy prints an IQ of 140 and names its source, Simonton’s Table 1, column II-C, marking it a historiometric estimate and not a test. brainmanager.io gives 130–140 and calls 135 the most cited; sociosite.net says 132, and usconstitution.net says around 125. None of those three names a study. All of it lies inside Cox’s span, and 132.5 is the average of her four figures, so a plain 125 or 132 may be her number with the citation stripped off. That is an inference: neither of those sites says where its number came from. Simonton noted in 2020 that the presidential IQ scores have drawn a great deal of attention in popular media and on social networks.
What it is not is the 2001 hoax. The fabricated “Lovenstein Institute” release ranked twelve presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, and gave Bill Clinton 182 and George W. Bush 91. The Guardian repeated it as fact on July 19, 2001 and corrected it later. Washington is not on the list, so no figure for the IQ of George Washington can trace back to it. The episode still shows how easily a president’s IQ can be invented. For the wider genre, see the site’s articles on US presidents ranked by IQ and on where celebrity IQ numbers come from.
George Washington’s estimated IQ sits below the ranges this site gives Thomas Jefferson (150–170), Benjamin Franklin (155–175) and Abraham Lincoln (140–160), overlapping Lincoln’s only between 140 and 145, and Simonton’s table shows why. Cox’s corrected figures for ages 18 to 26 run 140 for Washington, 150 for Lincoln and 160 for Jefferson. Simonton’s Intellectual Brilliance scale, built from judges’ ratings of anonymized biographical profiles on adjectives such as inventive, artistic, curious and wise, gives Washington +0.3 (0 is the average president), Lincoln +0.8 and Jefferson +3.1, the highest of 39 presidents. His Openness rating is 14 out of 100, against Lincoln’s 95 and Jefferson’s 99. Those two scales favor lives that read as inventive, curious and wide-ranging, and Jefferson’s own phrase for Washington was “little aided by invention or imagination.” That is no insult: 125–145 spans roughly the top 5% to the top 0.1% on a bell curve with a standard deviation of 15, and Cox’s figures use the old ratio definition of IQ, so they are not modern test scores.
How we read a number →Washington is one of eight presidents whose four IQ figures are Cox’s own (boldface in the table), not imputed. The same row gives Intellectual Brilliance +0.3 and Openness 14. The author notes that Cox’s corrected scores “may be overestimates” and that her figures use the old ratio definition of IQ.
States that Cox could not administer tests to her 301 deceased subjects and relied on historiometric assessment of biographical data, that she estimated IQs for eight presidents from Washington to Grant, and that the resulting presidential IQ scores have drawn wide popular attention.
Published in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, 7:100–04. Source of the phrases quoted on this page: “great and powerful, without being of the very first order” and “slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.”
Birth date and county, a “limited education”, teenage land surveyor, the 1775 command, presiding officer of the 1787 Convention, two terms (1789–1797) and death at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799.
First published in David C. Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796; Hamilton wrote a large part, Madison drafted an earlier version in 1792, and the ideas were Washington’s.
Formal education ended at about fifteen; surveying at sixteen and seventeen; the June 15, 1775 appointment; unanimous elections of February 4, 1789 and December 5, 1792; the April 30, 1789 inauguration; death on December 14, 1799. Records John Adams’s complaint that he was unlearned for his station.
Orientation only: the Old Style birth date, the Rules of Civility, age at death, and Carver’s dates and Tuskegee post for the disambiguation answer.
Lists Washington at 140, labelled a historiometric estimate from Simonton 2006 Table 1, column II-C, “not a test.” It lists Jefferson at 160 and Lincoln at 150 from the same column.
brainmanager.io: 130 to 140, most cited about 135, no method named. sociosite.net: 132 (135 in one place), no source or disclaimer. usconstitution.net: “around 125”, no source.
Both show the 2001 list running from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush (twelve presidents), with no earlier president. The Guardian repeated it as fact on July 19, 2001 and later corrected it.
None found. He died in 1799. Checked: Simonton’s 2006 and 2020 papers, four aggregator sites, and the Lovenstein release, which does not include him.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for George Washington, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
Websites give the George Washington estimated IQ as 125 (usconstitution.net), 132 (sociosite.net), 130–140 with 135 most cited (brainmanager.io) or 140 (IQ Caddy). Only IQ Caddy says where its number comes from.
No published IQ test result exists for George Washington. IQ Caddy traces its 140 to Table 1 of Simonton’s 2006 paper, column II-C, and labels it a historiometric estimate, not a test. That table holds four figures for him (125, 130, 135 and 140), which Simonton took from Catharine Cox’s 1926 study. The other three sites cite no study, but every number they print falls inside the same span, and the average of the four is 132.5.
All four sites sit inside the 125–140 span of Cox’s four figures, so they read as one source repeated, with and without its label, rather than four independent confirmations. The 140 is the highest and one of the two corrected scores; the uncorrected figures are 125 and 135, and Simonton warns that the corrected ones may be overestimates. That is why this range keeps 125 as its floor and reaches 145 only on the strength of his adult record.
Want a number that does hold up? Every figure on this page is somebody’s claim. Take the 30-question test and get a percentile you can check rather than a figure you have to trust.
George Washington — frequently asked
What is George Washington’s IQ?
No measured IQ exists for George Washington, because he was never tested. Estimates drawn from his biography put his IQ level at roughly 125 to 140, and IQ Metrics’ estimated range is 125–145. The numbers that circulate come from Catharine Cox’s 1926 study, not from a test.
Where does George Washington’s estimated IQ of 140 come from?
It is the highest of four estimates Catharine Cox made in 1926 from records of his life up to age 26, tabulated in Table 1 of Dean Keith Simonton’s 2006 paper in Political Psychology. The four are 125, 130, 135 and 140; 140 is the corrected score for ages 18 to 26.
Did George Washington take an IQ test?
No. He died in 1799, long before intelligence tests existed, and no published IQ test result exists for him. Every figure attached to his name is a retrospective estimate, and several websites print one without naming any source.
Was George Washington in the 2001 presidential IQ hoax?
No. The fabricated 2001 “Lovenstein Institute” list covered only the twelve presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, so no Washington figure can come from it. The Guardian repeated it as fact on July 19, 2001 and later corrected it.
How does George Washington’s estimated IQ compare with Thomas Jefferson’s and Abraham Lincoln’s?
It is lower. IQ Metrics puts Washington at 125–145, against 150–170 for Thomas Jefferson and 140–160 for Abraham Lincoln. Cox’s corrected figures for ages 18 to 26 show the same order: 140 for Washington, 150 for Lincoln and 160 for Jefferson.
Did George Washington go to college?
No. His formal education ended when he was about fifteen, after an irregular schooling under schoolmasters and tutors. He learned surveying young and was appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County, Virginia, at seventeen. He later spoke of his own education as “defective.”
Was George Washington a genius?
That depends on the definition. Jefferson wrote that his mind was “great and powerful, without being of the very first order.” An estimated IQ of 125–145 is very high but below the ranges IQ Metrics gives Jefferson and Franklin; Washington’s standing rests more on judgment, command and character than on intellectual output.
Is George Washington Carver the same person as President George Washington?
No. This page covers George Washington, the first US president (1732–1799). George Washington Carver (c. 1864–1943) was an agricultural scientist and inventor who taught at Tuskegee Institute. He has no profile on this site, and nothing here is a claim about his IQ.
How does my IQ compare with George Washington?
You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.
Where does this estimate come from?
From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other politics profiles, starting with Thomas Jefferson.
- Take the 30-question IQ test — get a measured score and percentile of your own
- Average IQ by country — how the scale behaves across populations
- How IQ Metrics scores its assessment — the method behind our own number
- More on how IQ testing works — reliability, error and what a score can and cannot say
- More politics profiles — same field, same method
More politics
Photograph by Alexander Gardner (8 November 1863), public domain. Background removed for the portrait above. · Official portrait by Shealah Craighead for the White House, public domain. Background removed for the portrait above. · Official White House photograph by Pete Souza (2012), public domain. Background removed for the portrait above.
.jpg){kind=link}
An estimate is an inference.
Yours can be measured.
Thirty questions, scored against general-population benchmarks. Your score, your percentile, your ability breakdown and a printable IIF certificate.
Find your IQ score now! →