The 12-year-old girl of Indian-origin, has just attained a higher IQ score than Albert Einstein and Professor Stephen Hawking.
Lydia Sebastian has scored 162 points in the 150-minute test conducted by Mensa, the society for people with high IQs. With a perfect score of 162 (for those below 18), Lydia has beaten Einstein and Hawkings, the geniuses behind the general theory of relativity and Hawking radiation, who are estimated to have IQs of 160. The maximum adult score has been 161.
Lydia, a student of the Colchester County High school in Essex lives with her parents in London and took the test during her recent holidays from school. Her parents were also surprised, as it was Lydia who was enthusiastic to take the test.
Lydia joins Nicole Barr from Essex and Aahil Jouher, a 10-year-old boy from Blackburn who scored perfect this year reported The Guardian. A score above 140 is considered to be genius and Lydia has joined the top 1% of the population with such high IQ.
"‘We really have done nothing special with her...She also had an early interest in reading. When she was a few years old she was reading books that were for children several years older than her," her father Arun told The Daily Mail.
Lydia when she won the Littlegarth mathematics challenge
The report also adds that Lydia's favourite subjects include physics and chemistry and she hopes to have a career ‘related to maths’ when she is older.
Her father is a radiologist at the Colchester General Hospital, and her mother Erika Kottiath, is an associate director at Barclays Bank. Both of them originally come from Kerala.