John Quincy Adams – 175
John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States, and he presided over the country from 1801 until 1809. From 1825 to 1829, he served as President of the United States. He was the son of former president and founding father John Adams, and he was better known by his initials, JQA. The younger man was adamantly opposed to slavery and a proponent of equal rights for all. He referred to himself as “the acutest, the astutetest, and the archest enemy of southern slavery that ever existed,” according to the New York Times. In order to support nonintervention policies, JQA preferred to remain out of European matters. He was vocal in his opposition to the annexation of Texas, and he is credited with taking the world’s oldest surviving presidential photograph. It may be traced all the way back to 1843 when he was 76 years old. In the early nineteenth century, having an IQ of 175 indicated you were smarter than 99.9999 percent of the world’s population, which meant you were the smartest person on the planet.
John Quincy Adams
