LYDIA Sebastian has outwitted geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking in an IQ test she described as “easy”.
The talented 12-year-old from Langham sat the famous Mensa paper during her school summer holidays, after nagging mum Erika for a year.
Her proud parents couldn’t believe it when the result came back showing a score of 162.
It is the top score anyone can achieve who sits the Cattrall III B paper – physicists Einstein and Hawking both scored 160.
Lydia said: “At first, I was really nervous, but as I started, it was much easier than I expected it to be and then I relaxed.”
Lydia, who is about to go into her second year at Colchester County High School for Girls, said the paper challenged her language skills, including analogies, definitions and her sense of logic.
Lydia, who has read all seven of the Harry Potter book series three times, said she completed the paper with minutes to spare at the sitting at London’s Birkbeck College.
She was mainly surrounded by grown ups hoping to qualify for Mensa membership.
Proud dad Arun, a radiologist at Colchester General Hospital, said: “She had looked at the websites for the IQ tests herself and had shown an interest in them and talked to my wife about them, so she said ‘why don’t you go ahead with them?
“She was talking about it for over a year.
“We got the results on Friday.
When I heard she had the maximum possible mark, I was overwhelmed and so was my wife.
“Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking got an IQ of 160. To be honest, I didn’t really believe it.”
Lydia’s parents knew their only child, who has been playing the violin since four, was gifted from the start.
Mr Sebastian added: “She started talking when she was really young, when she was six-months-old.
“At the time I was a trainee doctor and my wife was studying chemistry and I was away at the weekends.
She used to say a few words to me on the phone.”
Maths whizz Lydia said the nature of the tests meant she was unable to prepare for them, adding: “I gave it my best shot really.”
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