Smartest Person Alive? Paul Allen And 4 Others That Could Be After Stephen Hawking's Death

Stephen Hawking was considered one of the smartest people living, best known for his theories and work on black holes, which changed the world's view of the universe. The renowned scientist died at his home in Cambridge, England, on Tuesday, leaving the title of smartest person alive to someone else. There is a line of mathematicians and astrophysicist whose work puts them in the running, but the most prominent ones have been listed below:

Paul Allen: A Seattle native, Allen has a reported IQ of 160. The former Microsoft co-founder scored higher than Bill Gates on the pre-1995 SAT, with a perfect 1600. That's 10 points more than his Microsoft partner.

Edward Witten: Best known for his work on string theory, M-theory, quantum gravity and supersymmetry, Witten, a Baltimore native, is considered the world's greatest living theoretical physicist, making Time 100's most influential people in the world list in 2004. Like Hawking, Witten is a recipient of the Albert Einstein Award.

Andrew Wiles: The English mathematician is arguably best known for cracking Fermat's Last Theorem​, a 358-year-old number theory, in 1995. The Cambridge native garnered multiple awards for his work in mathematics, including an International Mathematic Union silver plaque, a National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics and The Shaw Prize.

Ruth Lawrence: Considered a child prodigy, the British mathematician received her bachelor's degree from Oxford University in in 1985 at 13 years old. By 1986, she had her second degree in physics. Three years later, she obtained her doctorate of philosophy in mathematics from Oxford. Currently, Lawrence is an associate professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Einstein Institute of Mathematics.

Sabrina Pasterski: Born in Chicago, Paterski was the first woman to graduate at the top of her undergrad program in 20 years. She was a Harvard Ph. D candidate when she was just 22 years old. Pasterski started building her first kit aircraft engine when she was 10 years old and was able to fly the plane solo at 13. In 2016, Hawking cited Pasterski's solo paper on electromagnetic memory.