Who Are the Brains of Britain?

Along with finding shelter, warmth, food, drink, sex, and money, mankind is beset by a chronic impulse that’s slightly further down the hierarchy of human needs but is just as strong: the impulse to feel smarter than one’s fellow man. The history of academic, legal and political debate seems like a chronicle of showing-off – displaying the steely logic of one’s argument by revealing the gaping holes in someone else’s. Comparing intelligence is an imperfect science, but it’s something that, if we’re honest, we do all the time.

In Michael Frayn’s 1965 novel The Tin Men, a government organisation called the William Morris Institute of Automation Research is staffed by civil servants wondering about intelligence. For one, Dr Goldwasser, it defines his relationships with his colleagues: “…it had come to the point, Goldwasser tacitly admitted, where he found it helpful to his morale to talk to people he was sure were less clever than he was. Not stupid people, to whom he was unable to say anything at all, but to clever people who were just not clever enough to be challenging.”

Like many non-fictional figures, Goldwasser wonders if there was once some objective way of measuring relative human intelligence. “His anxiety on the point had developed into a sort of cerebral hypochondria. He was forever checking his mental performance for symptoms of decline. He borrowed sets of IQ tests from his colleagues, and timed his performance, plotting the results on graphs.” Frayn was writing at a time before Mensa tests became commonplace. But when we consider the relative intelligence of two people, what criteria do we use? Knowing someone has an IQ of 160 might make you respect him or her, but it tells you nothing about their knowledge of history or grasp of science, their ability to make intellectual connections or deal in helpful metaphors.

Then there are the words themselves: intelligent, clever, bright, brainy, sharp, smart, nimble-witted, intellectually gifted. They may inhabit the same columns of Roget’s Thesaurus, but their differences are minutely calibrated to carry hidden meanings. “Smart” and “bright” tend to be euphemisms for “non-academic” or “didn’t go to university”. “Sharp” and “quick-witted” mean good at verbal comebacks, rather than abstract thought. The word “clever” occupies a special territory – a place of facile charlatanry and cheap special effects. People who are called “clever” after the age of 12 are often being accused of trickery, pulling the wool over the eyes of their betters. “Mere cleverness is not wisdom,” said Euripides, the Greek dramatist, scornfully, and it’s a sentiment often echoed in the past 2,400 years. There was a special tone of suspicion and distrust in Lord Salisbury’s words when, in 1868, he called Disraeli: “Too clever by half.”

Years ago, I was talking to George Steiner, the polymathic professor of Churchill College, Cambridge and Geneva University. Steiner had been asked to contribute to a symposium of ideas predicting what the next Big Thing might be: an unforeseen war, the rise of a new superpower, a global epidemic? Steiner went through his distinguished fellow-contributors, finding them all wanting – this one was a Nobel laureate, “but only a novelist, not a great thinker”, that one was a world-famous chemist, “but essentially just a man in a white coat”.

Finally, I said: “Is there anyone you defer too, intellectually? Is there anyone that you’d admit to being cleverer than you?” He thought about it for a while and said: “What’re you asking me? Who is the cleverest person in the country?” I nodded eagerly. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “Who did the Times Literary Supplement get to review the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary?” I cudgelled my memory. “Geoffrey Hill? The poet?”"Of course,” said Steiner. “Have you read the Mercian Hymns? Outstanding.”

It occurred to me later that this was a sneaky response. I’ve always found Hill’s poetry well-nigh opaque, and blamed it (as you do) not on his inaccessibility but my shortcomings. If I, and other readers, were to appreciate his brilliance, we could do so only with the exegetical help of Steiner. But wouldn’t that make Steiner the equal to Hill, or the superior, in being able to unlock his difficult secrets?

Some time ago, we decided to ask some of the nation’s famously clever people, in a variety of fields and disciplines, the same question I asked Steiner. We asked them three things. First, to nominate the most intellectually gifted figure in their own field; second, to name someone whose intellect they admired in any discipline, or even outside the academic world; and third, to ask what they thought were the distinguishing features of the exceptionally brainy.

Somewhere in our minds lay the desire to establish a hierarchy of intelligence, a Clever List (along the lines of the Rich List). Surely a set of criteria existed that crossed or transcended the worlds of arts and science? We wrote to 100 leading public intellectuals, from architects to zoologists, asking for their views.

As the replies came in, it became apparent that the hierarchy wasn’t going to work. As an Oxford professor of philosophy pointed out, there’s intelligence you can measure by having a dozen chess grandmasters compete until one wins, and intelligence you can appreciate but not measure, in (say) listening to a dozen concert pianists playing a Brahms concerto. It became also apparent that some of our list found the whole exercise mystifying. Richard Rogers, the country’s top architect, said he found the questions “impossible to answer”. Frances Cairncross, the economist and rector of Exeter College Oxford, declared herself ” completely stumped”, because: “‘Intelligence’ is not an easy concept to guess at, even among economists. Influence, perhaps, but not intelligence.” Christopher Hitchens, the literary critic, replied: “I can think of a few people who I regard as brilliant and original, but I have no means of ‘ranking’ them.” The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, cannily declined, on the grounds that “it would be unfair to single anyone out”.

What remains is a fascinating clutch of nominations for the best and brightest minds in the UK – film-makers, molecular biologists, lawyers, surgeons, cultural historians, playwrights, philosophers – and a digest of new definitions of what we mean when we say, grudgingly or otherwise: ” Of course, Professor X is much cleverer than you or I…”

Alain de Botton

Writer and philosopher

Best philosopher? My nomination is the Glasgow-born philosopher John Armstrong, who currently teaches philosophy at the University of Melbourne.

He’s the author of three great books, The Conditions of Love, The Intimate Philosophy of Art and The Secret Power of Beauty. Armstrong combines a highly rigorous mind with a fluid writing style and a humane vision of life.

Most philosophers have abandoned the traditional areas that philosophers used to investigate. Armstrong continues to believe that working out how to be happy and how to be good remain the central questions of philosophy.

For an exceptionally brilliant thinker, I nominate the film- maker Mike Leigh, who over a long career has shown repeatedly that he understands the darkest sides of human beings – and yet retains an immense sympathy for them, too. His is an understanding geared towards teaching us to see ourselves better and to make peace with each other. To make great films as Leigh does requires an entirely uncliched mind – as well as the power to persuade a large number of people of the soundness of one’s vision.

John Carey

Professor of English at Oxford, leading critic

I rate Christopher Ricks very highly in the literary field. His only competitor, in my view, is Frank Kermode. Ricks is matchless at teasing meanings out of a text, and at verbal analysis, and at seeing how texts source other texts. His books on Milton and on Eliot’s early poems are masterpieces. On the other hand, he is no good at abstract thought. This is where Frank excels. He has mastered the whole intricate field of theory and come out the other side. Frank’s The Sense of an Ending is, for sheer intellectual brilliance, superior to anything Christopher has done.

On matters outside literature, what about Steve Jones? He seems to me more multi-faceted than Dawkins. And Michael Frayn – his new book, The Human Touch, has remarkable philosophical subtlety and power (despite the LRB review).

Gordon Conway,

Chief scientific adviser, Department for International Development

1. The most intelligent living figure in ecology is undoubtedly Robert May.

2. The figure I most admire is Hilary Benn. He has the capacity to take something complex, understand it quickly and speak about it to a lay audience with knowledge and enthusiasm.

3. A first-class mind “gets it”.

Sir Ara Darzi, KBE

Professor of Surgery, Imperial College

The one individual whom I admire as exceptionally brilliant is Simon Stevens. From a middle manager to health policy adviser for Tony Blair, he’s become one of the most influential people in healthcare today. Stevens’s intellectual energy and pragmatism were key to bringing improvements in NHS healthcare delivery. From Downing Street he has made a smooth transition to the private sector and has been influential in developing an acceptable face of commercial medicine and privatised care. Few individuals have exerted such energy and influence in both the public and private sectors and even fewer have his gumption and intellect.

Niall Ferguson

Professor of History, Harvard

Simon Schama, the most gifted writer and lecturer of this generation.

Richard Dawkins, despite rather than because of The God Delusion, and Noel Malcolm, a quite exceptionally brilliant man.

Michael Frayn

Playwright, novelist, translator, thinker

I’m not sure what constitutes intelligence in the context of writing. I suppose some writers, just like some accountants and bus- drivers, are intelligent in a general sense, but I’m not sure that this has got any very direct bearing on their quality as writers. There are also good writers who are not very bright. Some playwrights who are both good playwrights and intelligent in some general sense: Caryl Churchill, Christopher Hampton, David Hare. Some novelists likewise: VS Naipaul, Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Martin Amis. Writers on science: Bill Bryson, Richard Dawkins.

A “first-class mind” sounds as if it belongs to someone who went to Winchester and Balliol, then into the Treasury, never to be heard of again.

Christopher Frayling

Rector, Royal College of Art

I’d nominate Marina Warner. She is a combination of cultural historian, art historian, literary critic and commentator on the contemporary arts. She has a mixture of traditional scholarship and the latest thinking, she is bridge between the “high” arts and the “popular” arts and she is a gifted writer. Her Reith Lectures of 1994 – “Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time” – were seriously underrated. She is also comprehensible, which is a plus in the world of cultural theory, and she is trusted by practitioners and critics alike. She combines intellect with intelligence, which is rare.

Since Umberto Eco sadly isn’t eligible, I’d nominate Quentin Skinner, the Cambridge historian of ideas, who has had a huge influence on my thinking.

He is original, full of insights, an able communicator (though not much in the media), judicious, with thoughts and approaches that are transferable to other subjects, succinct, not dazzled by fashion and far from glib.

He nuances his ideas without losing the plot in sub-clauses. He never confuses obscurantism with cleverness (as many do). He seems to feel an obligation to put things over clearly, even though they may be very complex.

His subject, the history of ideas, has changed direction because of him, which is one measure of a first-class mind. He isn’t a household name but that isn’t a measure of one.

John Gray

Professor of European Thought, London School of Economics

The most intelligent philosopher? In this category, I’d name Alasdair McIntyre. He’s been living in the US for some decades but he is UK-born.

What’s outstanding about his work is his profound excavation of the incoherence of contemporary morality (best set out in his classic, After Virtue). He’s also incapable of writing a sentence that is unintelligent or uninteresting. I say this despite the fact I don’t share his [Catholic] religious beliefs. His philosophical work doesn’t depend on them. With regard to the most intellectually brilliant UK person all round, I’d name the creator of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock. I choose him because his theory, though long resisted, is now in its essential elements accepted by many scientists as suggesting a revolutionary view of life on Earth; and because his thought leads him, and others, to fundamental reflections on the nature of science itself. He is a pioneering and highly independent thinker as well as one who reaches to fundamentals – in other words, “a first-class mind” of the most creative kind.

David Hare

Playwright

When I went to university my supervision partner was so prodigious in his learning and dazzling brainpower, I could never call myself clever again.

But I’ve worked a long time as a writer, so I see things nobody else sees and describe things nobody else has noticed. Is that clever? I read that Christopher Hitchens can instantly access any book or article he’s read. No one in the literary field has done what, say, Stephen Frears has done – keep a contemporary diary for over 30 years which knocks all contemporary novelists into a cocked hat. But is he clever like, say, Claire Tomalin is genuinely clever? Not really. Richard Dawkins is clever, of course, but his latest book is a bit foolish, isn’t it?

Peter Hennessy

Professor of Contemporary History, London University

I’ve thought long and hard about your intriguing questions, but I can’t think of the criteria you need. It really depends whether you are looking for polymathy – someone like the late Ernest Gellner, who shone as a social anthropologist, philosopher and historian. Modern scholarly life rather militates against polymathy.

Eric Hobsbawm

Marxist historian

History is not a field which requires anything like as much intelligence i.e. the capacity to manipulate and develop ideas, as many other fields e.g.

in my experience, economics. Probably the best list of top historians is that of the main winners of the Wolfson Prize in history over the past 20 years. But they are of uneven intelligence. Their judgment is based on the quality of the work rather than of the mind. Still, for great comprehensive studies of the birth of the modern world (Chris Bayly) or the early middle ages (Chris Wickham), you have to be pretty bright. If you ask me whom I admired as the most brilliant man I met in any academic discipline, I would probably say Sydney Brenner Nobel laureate in molecular biology from Cambridge, now based mostly in San Diego. But he is South African.

Professor Richard Layard

Emeritus Professor of Economics, LSE

1.Sir James Mirrlees of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the 1960s and 1970s he basically invented the subject of public economics – ie, the study of how we would plan taxes, government expenditure and regulations, so as to maximise the sum of human happiness. Others since then, like Sir Anthony Atkinson, have modified the criteria to give greater weight to removing misery. In the next 25 years, public economics will be the vehicle through which the new science of happiness takes over the policy debate.

2. Professor David Clark Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London.

David Clark is now the world’s leading expert and practitioner in the field of cognitive behavioural therapy. He is a great practitioner, a great researcher, a great leader, a great expositor and a great protagonist in committees. He is Olympian – calm, charming, authoritative, with an answer to any question. Partly thanks to him, this is one of the few academic fields in which Britain leads the world.

Matt Ridley

Scientist

In fields that I know, the geneticist Alec Jeffreys has penetrating brilliance at understanding genes. It is no accident he discovered the most applied use of DNA [fingerprinting]. John Krebs is the best summariser, chairer and clarifier of arguments. Richard Dawkins is the best comprehender and explainer of science and is extraordinarily well-read. Robert May has mathematical genius. Jonathan Miller is one of our great polymaths, as is Raymond Tallis. But I find it difficult to be sure how to define ” gifted,”"intelligent” or “brilliant”. Of course, some people are good at school things. But after that, the definitions of clever are subjective, and people’s brilliance can often be narrow, sitting alongside remarkable stupidity in other things. One of the dullest conversations I ever had was at All Souls, Oxford.

Simon Singh

Science writer, broadcaster, television producer

I would say Andrew Wiles is the outstanding British mathematician of our time, because he solved the most notorious problem in mathematics, namely Fermat’s Last Theorem. It had remained unsolved for over three centuries and Wiles’s proof astonished the world.

Martin Rees is the outstanding British scientist of the 21st century. He is a major figure in astrophysics. He has been appointed to some of the most important positions in British society, enabling him to influence British policy on a whole range of issues. He is master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and has highlighted the concerns surrounding science education.

He is President of the Royal Society, and has argued for a more rational debate on a variety of issues. His commitment to science and society is best exemplified by his book Our Final Century, which discusses the threats to our civilisation.

Geoffrey Robertson

QC and leading human rights lawyer

My nomination for the most intellectually gifted person in the legal sphere would be Ronald (Ronnie) Dworkin, who took over from HLA Hart, the Oxford professorship of jurisprudence, in 1969 at the incredibly early age of 39.

Dworkin horrified conservative Oxford academics by giving evidence for Oz magazine, along with George Melly, Marty Feldman and John Peel. He was at University College when Leonard (now Lord) Hoffman was my tutor. I think that Hoffman would now be recognised as the intellectual powerhouse in our highest court, the House of Lords (soon to be called the Supreme Court). He has been influenced by Dworkin, especially his book Law’s Empire, where Dworkin presents his natural law arguments for principles that he considers inherently right.

Thus, while many judges write dreary judgments on human rights that are full of European decisions couched in direst Euro-prose, Lenny will revert to Magna Carta, or find a short and sensible principle that encapsulates British traditions and philosophical principles.

Law is a difficult subject about which to be intellectual, since much workaday legal jobbing is concerned with the application of decided precedents. Some lawyers go far simply by their ability to amass and order such precedents; they are builders, rather than architects, of jurisprudence.

There are also distinctions between academics such as Dworkin, judges such as Hoffman and Queen’s Counsel such as myself. The advocate has to be the first creative lawyer, deciding which strands of precedent to mix with philosophy, history, bills of rights and international legal conventions, to produce some new doctrine, which could have a profound effect (e.g. the case of Pratt v Attorney General of Jamaica, where the Privy Council’s acceptance of the argument that it amounted to torture to keep men on death row for years has led to thousands of death penalty commutations of sentence throughout the Commonwealth).

James Lovelock

Biologist and creator of the Gaia theory

Robert May is the single most intelligent biologist. What makes him outstanding are these qualities in addition to his genius as a scientist. He is a polymath and not a narrowly focused scientist, he can write well and express complex ideas in a comprehensible way and, most important, he is an outspoken leader; during his presidency of the Royal Society, he was the true voice of UK science.

The person I most admire is Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey. He is one of the princes of that unusually hostile continent; perhaps he has been tempered by its glacial cold. Yet he is astonishingly strong and humane and serves his people and the nation as no other has done.

I am proud to have him as a friend.

A first-class mind might be the possession of one who has a strong and true character, a ruler of instinct and intuition, not a slave to them. The qualities of intelligence, memory and speed of thought are also needed, as is that imponderable quality that enables the subconscious mind to serve as the source of original concepts and practical inventions.

Quentin Skinner

Regius Professor of History, Cambridge

Within my specialist area of modern intellectual history, one of the people I most admire is Noel Malcolm, a fellow of All Souls, Oxford. I think he is remarkable in many ways. There’s his astonishing breadth of learning, aided by his command of languages. He has written authoritatively about the history of music as well as about the history of philosophy, and is, in my view, the world’s leading expert on Thomas Hobbes. He has also written extensively about contemporary politics, and has written major books on Bosnia and Kosovo. His work is not merely abundant, but also highly original, and he writes with a most enviable clarity and elegance. Finally, in a world that sometimes seems given over to the celebration of celebrity, he is an intensely serious scholar, someone who really tries to get things right, however long it takes.

Charles Saumarez Smith

Director, National Gallery

I’d nominate Simon Schama as the most intelligent figure in the field of art. He uses his brilliant intellect to understand and interpret the practice of artists and the culture they work in.

The most intelligent person I’ve ever known is Anthony Appiah, the British-born Professor of Philosophy at Princeton. He’s the epitome of the “first-class mind” – free-thinking and able to apply his intelligence to any intellectual problem.

I name these people because I think the key attribute of intellectual brilliance is originality of mind.

Roger Scruton

Philosopher

The single most intelligent living figure in the field of philosophy is, in my view, David Wiggins. He is outstanding for his inflexible intellectual honesty and determination not to rest content with half-truths.

In other fields, I admire the composer Robin Holloway, who is a master of his art and also a penetrating and articulate critic; the painter/composer/eccentric Tom Phillips, who has a special genius; the novelist Ian McEwan, who has managed to be modern without losing his compassion or his moral sense; the poet and writer Ruth Padel who brings everything she touches to life.A first-class mind is one that is able to shut out nonsense, distraction and all that is merely fashionable; it is a mind that is able to pursue abstract and eternal questions without losing contact with concrete experience that makes those questions relevant.

Professor Jane Somerville

Cardiologist

The single most intelligent living figure in the medical field is probably Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub. He has a remarkable, three- dimensional mind, great understanding of and contribution to basic science, and is an outstanding cardiac surgeon.

A first-class mind is one that can see beyond what other people see, is practical, pragmatic, simple and unaffected, and can apply these multi-skills to many features, not just one part of science, politics or whatever. I’m not aware that medicine either attracts this sort of mind or has any precedent currently. I don’t think I know of anyone I’d call exceptionally brilliant.

Claire Tomalin

Biographer and critic

Here are some people whose cleverness I love: John Carey, Michael Frayn, Polly Toynbee, Jonathan Miller, Martin Amis, John Gross, Neil McGregor, Keith Thomas, Helena Kennedy, Onora O’Neill Clive James. What is intelligence, what is cleverness? Part of it is being able to engage your talents in some activity, make them productive, delightful or useful to others. Some of those I’ve listed fascinate me by the agility and sharpness of their minds, some by the way they’ve applied themselves to particular problems. I enjoy being married to a very clever man [Michael Frayn], because I’m never bored, and I’m amused by seeing how differently our minds work.

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