Christopher Michael Langan (born March 25, 1952) is an American horse rancher and autodidact who has been reported to score very highly on IQ tests. Langan's IQ was estimated on ABC's 20/20 to be between 195 and 210, and in 1999 he was described by a few journalists as "the smartest man in America" or "in the world".
Biography
Langan was born in 1952 in San Francisco, California. His mother, Mary Langan-Hansen (née Chappelle, 1932–2014), was the daughter of a wealthy shipping executive but was cut off from her family. Langan's biological father left before he was born, and is said to have died in Mexico. Langan's mother married three more times, and had a son by each husband. Her second husband was murdered, and her third died by suicide. Langan grew up with the fourth husband Jack Langan, who has been described as a "failed journalist" who went on drinking sprees and disappeared from the house, locked the kitchen cabinets so the four boys could not get to the food in them and used a bullwhip as a disciplinary measure. The family was very poor; Langan recalls that they all had only one set of...