Christopher Langan

When reviewing Langan's CTMU, American artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel said, "Langan’s ideas are well worth reading and thinking about." He also says that the theory "doesn’t really justify anything resembling conventional ([i.e.] anthropomorphic) religious 'Gods' ". The CTMU was also reviewed by computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll, who argued that the theory is an "ill-defined variation of naive set theory". Journalist Justin Ward in The Baffler also wrote that it "isn't particularly scientific—or original", saying it was rather a repackaging of intelligent design.

Langan was profiled in Malcom Gladwell's bestselling 2008 book Outliers, which discusses the various factors needed for a person to achieve success. Langan was discussed alongside J. Robert Oppenheimer, who also was highly intelligent and faced obstacles in his college years. In the book, Gladwell highlighted the contrasts between Oppenheimer, who went on to lead the Manhattan Project, and Langan, who spent most of his years as a bouncer and farmer.

In 2004, Langan moved with his wife Gina (née  LoSasso), a clinical neuropsychologist, to northern Missouri, where he owns and operates a horse ranch and undertakes activities for his Mega Foundation. Langan does not have any children, which he describes as a conscious decision based on his "intellectual ability to foresee the continuation of [his] own chronic low income status and rising affirmative-action discrimination against [him]".

In 1999, Langan and others formed a non-profit corporation named the Mega Foundation to "create and implement programs that aid in the development of severely gifted individuals and their ideas". The organization is designated for those with IQs of 164 or above.

Langan attended high school, but spent his last years engaged mostly in independent study, due to the relative indifference of his teachers in accommodating his pleas concerning his increasing need and capacity to absorb more advanced material. While left to his own studies, he reports to have started teaching himself "advanced math, physics, philosophy, Latin, and Greek". According to Cynthia McFadden from ABC's 20/20, he earned a perfect score on the SAT (pre-1995 scale) despite taking a nap during the test.

Christopher Michael Langan (born March 25, 1952) is an American horse rancher and author, who has scored extremely high on multiple IQ tests. Langan's IQ has been estimated on ABC's 20/20 to be between 195 and 210, and he has been described as "the smartest man in America" as well as "the smartest man in the world" by some journalists.

Christopher Michael Langan was born in 1952 in San Francisco, California but spent most of his childhood in Montana. His mother, Mary Langan-Hansen (née Chappelle, 1932 – 2014), was the daughter of a wealthy shipping executive but was cut off from her family. His biological father, Melvin Letman, died or disappeared before he was born. Owing to a combination of severed family ties and an absent father figure for her children, Mary was often pressured to adopt an economically itinerant lifestyle on behalf of her four children. This meant frequently living in conditions of violence and extreme poverty.