<p>IQ tests, particularly in the era when Feynman took them, tend to emphasize vocabulary as a sign of intellect. For mathematicians/physicists/engineers, the correlation is likely to be fairly weak, particularly if the tests are taken in childhood. Feynman mentions in one of the autobiographical collections of anecdotes that he once went into the New York Public Library and asked for a “map of the cat.” He meant an anatomical drawing. However, I’d surmise that his vocabulary was not especially large when he was a child. He also mentioned that when he started to study solid geometry, he had difficulty with it, because he did not understand how the two dimensional drawings were supposed to represent three-dimensional objects. As I recall his saying, it took some time for this to “click” with him–at any rate, longer than an IQ test allows for figuring out things like rotations of 3D objects, represented in 2D. I’d hypothesize that these two factors account for Feynman’s measured IQ. He probably blew the top off the test in other areas.</p>