Yuval Noah Harari's IQ: 140
Yuval Noah Harari
Estimated IQ
140
Known For
Historian, author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons
About Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem whose 2011 book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind became one of the best-selling history books of the twenty-first century, translated into more than sixty languages and read by world leaders including Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates. Sapiens offers a sweeping account of human history organized around the thesis that what distinguishes Homo sapiens is the ability to believe in shared fictions — myths, religions, money, nations — and that this capacity for shared narrative is the source of our unique cooperative power. Subsequent books Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century have extended this framework to the future of humanity in the age of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. His estimated IQ of 140 reflects the synthetic intelligence required to construct coherent historical narratives across enormous temporal and geographic spans.
What an IQ of 140 Means
Harari's estimated IQ of 140 reflects the cognitive demands of his particular intellectual project: constructing a coherent macrohistorical narrative that synthesizes archaeology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, economics, and political history across 70,000 years of human existence. This kind of synthetic intelligence — knowing enough about each domain to identify the relevant findings, and having the narrative and conceptual intelligence to integrate them into a coherent argument — is cognitively demanding even if it does not require the technical depth that original research in any single field demands. His work has attracted criticism from specialists in each domain who find that his synthetic account misrepresents their field's findings or consensus, a critique that applies to most ambitious macrohistorical synthesis. His meditation practice — he meditates two hours daily and takes regular retreats — is an unusual feature of his intellectual life that he credits with providing the mental clarity his work requires.
How Yuval Noah Harari Compares
To understand where this falls on the IQ scale, see our complete IQ score ranges guide, or learn what IQ actually measures.
Famous IQ Comparison
| Person | Estimated IQ | Known For |
|---|---|---|
| Yuval Noah Harari | 140 | Historian, author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons |
| Larry Page | 160 | Co-founder of Google, Stanford PhD dropout, PageRank inventor |
| Malcolm Gladwell | 130–140 | Author, journalist, The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink |
| Sergey Brin | 160 | Co-founder of Google, mathematics prodigy, Stanford PhD dropout |
| Ernest Hemingway | 145 | Nobel Prize author, minimalist literary style, The Old Man and the Sea |
| Peter Thiel | 152 | PayPal co-founder, Palantir, contrarian venture capitalist, author |
| George Orwell | 140 | Author of 1984 and Animal Farm, political essayist |
See the complete famous IQ list or check what an IQ of 140 means.
Careers That Match an IQ of 140
- Actuary — typical IQ range: 120–135
- Economist — typical IQ range: 120–135
- Anesthesiologist — typical IQ range: 125–140
Explore the full IQ by career chart.
Where This Estimate Comes From
- Documented University of Oxford PhD in history
- Estimates inferred from his academic career and globally influential books
- No publicly verified test result
Estimate disclaimer: Yuval Noah Harari's IQ figure is a speculative estimate compiled from public sources, not a verified test result. See how we compile these estimates.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Yuval Noah Harari's IQ?
Yuval Noah Harari's IQ is estimated at approximately 140, placing him in the top 0.4% of the population. He has not publicly taken a verified standardized IQ test. This estimate reflects his academic credentials (PhD in history from Oxford, professorship at Hebrew University), the synthetic ambition of his historical writing — constructing coherent narratives across 70,000 years of human history — and the intellectual range required to engage credibly with evolutionary biology, cognitive science, economics, and political theory in a single argument.
What is Harari's central argument in Sapiens?
Sapiens argues that Homo sapiens became the dominant species on Earth primarily because of the 'Cognitive Revolution' — a shift approximately 70,000 years ago that gave humans the unique ability to believe in and communicate about things that don't physically exist: gods, nations, money, human rights, corporations. This capacity for shared fiction allows large numbers of strangers to cooperate flexibly in ways no other animal can manage. The Agricultural Revolution, Harari argues, was paradoxically a disaster for individual humans (worse diet, harder work, more disease) but excellent for the species as a whole — and for the shared fictions that organized it. The Industrial Revolution and the future of AI are analyzed through the same framework.
What does Harari predict about the future of humanity?
In Homo Deus and 21 Lessons, Harari argues that the convergence of artificial intelligence and biotechnology may make most humans economically useless within decades — not through robot rebellion but through the simple fact that algorithms will outperform humans at most cognitive tasks, while biotechnology allows those with sufficient resources to upgrade themselves beyond the rest. He raises the prospect of a permanent 'useless class' and a cognitively enhanced elite, and argues that liberal democracy's foundational assumption — that individuals have meaningful agency over their own lives — may be undermined by AI systems that understand human preferences better than humans themselves do. He presents these as risks rather than predictions, and emphasizes that the outcome is not determined.
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MyIQScores Editorial Team
Researchers in cognitive psychology, psychometrics & educational science
Last updated
May 10, 2026
All content on MyIQScores is reviewed for scientific accuracy against peer-reviewed research in cognitive psychology and psychometrics. Our editorial team cross-references each article with published literature before publication and updates pages whenever new research warrants a revision.