The Ultimate Genius Quiz

Nikola Tesla, second fiddle to Thomas Edison in the public eye of history, created the method of electricity delivery power companies still use today.

It was the great and arguably mad, if not simply depressed, writer Edgar Allen Poe who wondered in print whether madness was a symptom of the highest intelligence.

That would be 17th-century genius -- and the father of physics -- Sir Isaac Newton who held the fairly modest view his genius was simply a glimpse at previously-held knowledge.

Along with perhaps his most famous invention -- the death ray -- Archimedes invented the water screw, a device that culls and carries water from below ground to thirsty people topside.

Princeton physics theorist Max Tegmark came up with the Quantum Suicide thought experiment, which supports the Many-Worlds explanation of quantum physics.

Hendrik Lorentz added the unproven -- and unnecessary -- concept of "ether" in the cosmos as the reason why things slow down the closer they get to the speed of light. Which is why you've heard of Einstein and not Lorentz.

The philosopher Socrates was executed in 399 B.C. after refusing to comply with the ruling "Thirty Tyrants" following their revolt in Athens. With the rulers, some of whom were former students of his, and the people persecuted by people he'd educated, Socrates had little support and was convicted by a jury of 500.

Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, grew orchids. He noted the design of the Star of Bethlehem and realized that, under evolution, the nectar store held deep in the flower should lead a nectar-drinking animal to develop appendages that could reach that nectar. Hence, the hawk moth.

The priest, astronomer and physician Imhotep is considered the world's first true physician.

Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician who lived around 400 B.C. She studied and taught quadratic equations, as well as philosophy. Sadly, she is often overlooked in the annals of history.