AN IMMENSA BRAIN
Schoolboy, 11, is smarter than Einstein & Hawking
BRAINBOX Yusuf Shah has scored the highest possible Mensa test score, beating Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Eleven-year-old Yusuf registered 162, which is the maximum possible for under-18s and in the top per cent of people of all ages. Hawking is said to have scored 160 and Einstein, although he never officially took the test, is believed to have achieved the same. Yusuf said he took the IQ test after his friends at school told him how smart he was. He celebrated his incredible achievement with a meal at Nando’s with his family. Yusuf said: “Everyone at school thinks I am very smart and I have always wanted to know if I was in the top two per cent of the people who take the test. It feels special to have a certificate for me and about me.”
Yusuf, who lives in Wigton Moor, Leeds, with his brothers Zaki and Khalid, mum Sana and dad Irfan, hopes to study maths at Oxford or Cambridge. Sana said: “I was so proud. We thought he might be intimidated by the adults at the test centre. But he did brilliantly. I still tell him, ‘Your dad is still smarter than you’. “We take it all lightheartedly.”