A Dundee first-year school pupil has notched the highest possible score in a Mensa IQ test, beating even Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking.
Gifted Agnijo Banerjee (12), of Grove Academy, Broughty Ferry, scored 162 in the test, which he took in Glasgow last month, putting him in the population’s top 1%.
Mensa confirmed the result, which it said is the highest-possible IQ test score in that category. Adults can only achieve a score of 161 in the same test, due to the way the tests are calculated, Mensa said.
Grove rector Graham Hutton has described Agnijo as “exemplifying what we are aiming for from our students, in particular his determination and willingness to learn”.
The youngster, who has already scored an A pass in his standard grade maths, which he sat while still a P7 pupil at Forthill Primary last year, is now preparing for his higher maths exam in May, four years ahead of schedule.
Agnijo’s proud mother Pronita says the youngster had revealed his remarkable intelligence from an early age.
“He takes after my husband, Dr Subhayu Bandyopadhuyay, who is a consultant in obstetrics in Aberdeen,” she said.
“He is an extremely gifted maths student who has won three top gold awards in the Scottish Mathematical Challenge in three successive years.
“He has also performed extremely well when he took his standard grade exam while still in primary seven, almost four years before his peer group, achieving an A pass.
“We knew from an early age that he was very bright, at the age of about four he had posters of dinosaurs and he memorised all the information from that.
“But until he did the Mensa test we didn’t really know how intelligent he was.”
Agnijo was born in India but the family moved to Scotland when he was a baby, firstly to Glasgow then to Dundee where his father worked at Ninewells Hospital.
A spokesperson for Mensa said: “I can confirm Agnijo did achieve 162 on the Cattell IIIB IQ test putting him in the top 1% of the population. It is the highest score for his age group on that IQ test.”