Most educated people in fiction?

[danzibr]

I was interested in people in fiction who are highly educated/know a ton (and would usually proceed to solve problems with their knowledge). (Side note, I put educated in the title, but actual education level doesn't really matter.)

I did a bit of googling on this, and the problem is you get a lot of people who are wicked smart but don't necessarily seem particularly learned, like Shikamaru from Naruto. People that have some crazy attention to detail, or come up with a really clever strategy.

A good example of this I think is Ben Franklin from National Treasure. Dude knows a ton, solves problems. I guess you could take any superhero with Doctor or Professor in their, uhh, name, but it seems they're more about their powers than knowing stuff.

[Peelee]

Will Hunting was incredibly educated for a buck fifty in late fees at the library.

[Rater202]

Dr. Patrick McNinja from The Adventures of Doctor McNinja has a PHD and/or MD in literally every subject except for Agriculture via an exploit involving mass cloning and then recombining with said clones.

He's often shown using his vast array of scientific knowledge(at least by in-universe standards) to solve problems.

[Peelee]

has a PHD and/or MD in literally every subject

I almost said "any character who has the standard hack writer trope of 'i have [x] Ph.Ds!'" but decided against. :smalltongue:

[Gnoman]

One of the earliest examples would be Sherlock Holmes and his far smarter brother Mycroft, both of which display an absurdly deep well of knowledge on their specific subjects.

[Batcathat]

I almost said "any character who has the standard hack writer trope of 'i have [x] Ph.Ds!'" but decided against. :smalltongue:

Heh, that was my first thought on seeing the subject, too. It's probably the second most common way of showing telling a character's intelligence, right behind "have an IQ of [unreasonably high number]".

As for the actual question, there are probably countless examples. For a specific one, I'll go with an example from a far too underappreciated show and say Harold Finch from "Person of Interest". While it's mostly his tech skills that get the spotlight, he's shown to be well educated in a wide range of topics.

[Wintermoot]

Dr. Patrick McNinja from The Adventures of Doctor McNinja has a PHD and/or MD in literally every subject except for Agriculture via an exploit involving mass cloning and then recombining with said clones.

He's often shown using his vast array of scientific knowledge(at least by in-universe standards) to solve problems.

Interesting. Did that predate or postdate Jamie Madrox doing the same thing in Marvel's Multiple Man X-factor serieses?

[Precure]

Jaspar from italian comic book Martin Mystere have access to Universal Databank and know anything, including a solution for the mystery of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", Charles Dickens' unfinished novel.

[Rater202]

I almost said "any character who has the standard hack writer trope of 'i have [x] Ph.Ds!'" but decided against. :smalltongue:
Yeah, obviously.

As I understand it, a PHD is more about the ability to do research and apply that knowledge than ti is about specific knowledge in the field so really more than two or three is excessive. In Real life to get the same effect in practice you'd have like, three doctorates in three distinct subjects plus a whole bunch of masters, bachelor's, and associate degrees in related fields

And even then unless they're implausibly young it would mostly just demonstrate that the person in question had a lot of free time and a lot of money to piss away.

Still a better shorthand than citing IQ.

Interesting. Did that predate or postdate Jamie Madrox doing the same thing in Marvel's Multiple Man X-factor serieses?
I don't know, do you have a date for when Jamie did that?

[Rynjin]

Wouldn't any character(s) with Omniscience all tie for first place on this one?

[halfeye]

There was that one dalek that downloaded the entire internet.

[Wintermoot]

I don't know, do you have a date for when Jamie did that?

looks like 2006

[J-H]

Doc Savage

Possibly inspired by him, Buckaroo Banzai. I haven't seen the 39 year old movie yet, but I understand he's a neurosurgeon, scientist, race car driver, and rock star, plus one or two other things.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

There was that one dalek that downloaded the entire internet.
There's an argument to be made that downloading the entire Internet would be a net educational deficit...

[Rater202]

looks like 2006

Then after by a couple of years.

At least when we're shown it, it's not clear how long beforehand it was planned out

[Trixie_One]

Interesting. Did that predate or postdate Jamie Madrox doing the same thing in Marvel's Multiple Man X-factor serieses?

I think Naruto might beat both of them? Him doing the learning by clone absorbtion was pretty early 00s.

[Batcathat]

I wouldn't be surprised if there are even older examples. Once you establish that a duplicating character retains every copy's memory (which I imagine most do, to keep down the confusion about what they've actually "experienced" if nothing else), exploiting it like that is probably fairly close at hand.

[Tyndmyr]

Heh, that was my first thought on seeing the subject, too. It's probably the second most common way of showing telling a character's intelligence, right behind "have an IQ of [unreasonably high number]".


Yeah, in the real world, anyone who feels compelled to tell you their IQ or brag about having seven PhDs is invariably an idiot.

It's weird that fiction writers feel that this method of telling us is better than showing them doing something smart.


There was that one dalek that downloaded the entire internet.

Ultron kind of did that, though the result was less "I smart" and more "decided humanity needed to perish," which is fair.

[DavidSh]

For well-educated people, although probably not what you are asking for, I like Fred Cassidy from Doorways in the Sand, who, due to particular clauses of his frozen uncle's will, was a full-time undergraduate student in good standing for 13 years, before finally being forced out with a PhD. He had to keep shifting majors to avoid meeting the requirements for any one of them, but meanwhile had a comfortable stipend from a trust fund that would vanish on graduation.

Realistically, the only degrees that people end up with multiple copies of is the Master's degree, unless you want to count combinations of PhD, MD, and JD.

[Batcathat]

It's weird that fiction writers feel that this method of telling us is better than showing them doing something smart.

I think the problem is the same as the one encountered by most roleplayers who've made a serious attempt at roleplaying a character with a much higher intelligence than their own. It's pretty damn hard to do convincingly. So while I don't love writers taking shortcuts like having their characters have an IQ of 378, 17 PhDs and the answer to literally any question, I can understand why they do it.

[Peelee]

Yeah, obviously.

As I understand it, a PHD is more about the ability to do research and apply that knowledge than ti is about specific knowledge in the field so really more than two or three is excessive. In Real life to get the same effect in practice you'd have like, three doctorates in three distinct subjects plus a whole bunch of masters, bachelor's, and associate degrees in related fields

And even then unless they're implausibly young it would mostly just demonstrate that the person in question had a lot of free time and a lot of money to piss away

Also contribution to the field. You want a doctorate, you gotta bring something to the table and advance the knowledge base yourself. And be prepared to defend that dissertation when you present it.

But yeah, graduate degrees are basically specializing (and maybe even sub-specializing) in your field. Writers giving characters multiple Ph.Ds,while not unbelievable itself, usually just highlights that the writer (or maybe an exec who meddle and insisted) doesn't understand how academia works.

That all being said, i did laugh when Thor told Banner to use one of his Ph.D's in that Thor movie.

It's weird that fiction writers feel that this method of telling us is better than showing them doing something smart.

Without being insulting to the writer, the character cant be smarter than the writer is. Genius in fiction is an illusion. A good writer can pull thr illusion off well. A poor writer just says they have an IQ of 300 and then magically know whatever they need to solve the plot.


For well-educated people, although probably not what you are asking for, I like Fred Cassidy from Doorways in the Sand, who, due to particular clauses of his frozen uncle's will, was a full-time undergraduate student in good standing for 13 years, before finally being forced out with a PhD. He had to keep shifting majors to avoid meeting the requirements for any one of them, but meanwhile had a comfortable stipend from a trust fund that would vanish on graduation.

Realistically, the only degrees that people end up with multiple copies of is the Master's degree, unless you want to count combinations of PhD, MD, and JD.

Yep. Double-doctors aren't uncommon, even if it's not the same degree. Walk into the medical district in Birmingham and you'll see a good bit of "Lastname MD, Ph.D"

[Seppl]

One example I immediately thought of is the Mother of Learning. Contrary to most other examples, the main character's education is not some informed background attribute, instead acquiring that knowledge is actually the focus of the story. He has to actually seek out the knowledge he needs, and practice a lot, before he gets to use it. Thus, all the times he uses his knowledge, it feels earned and not like an author fiat. While his education at the end is far from complete (that would be unrealistic even through the book's multi-year timespan), we still see him rise from underperforming student to one of the world's leading experts in the fields he chooses to study, with a generous helping of polymathy.


Without being insulting to the writer, the character cant be smarter than the writer is. Genius in fiction is an illusion. A good writer can pull thr illusion off well. A poor writer just says they have an IQ of 300 and then magically know whatever they need to solve the plot.

What about speed? The author can have weeks to think about a problem, then have the character follow the same train of thoughts in seconds. Quickly coming up with solutions for hard problems is an important part of high intelligence.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I think the problem is the same as the one encountered by most roleplayers who've made a serious attempt at roleplaying a character with a much higher intelligence than their own. It's pretty damn hard to do convincingly. So while I don't love writers taking shortcuts like having their characters have an IQ of 378, 17 PhDs and the answer to literally any question, I can understand why they do it.

Also, you have to be able to show that intelligence to the audience in a way that they understand, which can take a significant amount of time. Especially because this specific shorthand gets used during character introductions, before you've actually seen them do anything. It's a signpost saying "hey, expect this character to do smart things later on". There aren't a lot of fast ways of showing that character trait, which is also why the Rubik's Cube and hacker babble cliches exist.

[Tyndmyr]

I think the problem is the same as the one encountered by most roleplayers who've made a serious attempt at roleplaying a character with a much higher intelligence than their own. It's pretty damn hard to do convincingly. So while I don't love writers taking shortcuts like having their characters have an IQ of 378, 17 PhDs and the answer to literally any question, I can understand why they do it.

A much better way is to find smart things that happened in history and file off the particulars. It might be challenging to be clever on demand, which for a roleplayer is something of a problem, but in writing, one has the luxury of reflection and research. So, I don't feel too bad about holding the professional novelist to a higher standard than the guy who just wrote his first character sheet.

In any case, one must use the same solution for a number of other things. Writing a murderer but you, yourself, have only barely dabbled in felonious attempts on a few occasions? Time for research!

[Batcathat]

Also, you have to be able to show that intelligence to the audience in a way that they understand, which can take a significant amount of time. Especially because this specific shorthand gets used during character introductions, before you've actually seen them do anything. It's a signpost saying "hey, expect this character to do smart things later on". There aren't a lot of fast ways of showing that character trait, which is also why the Rubik's Cube and hacker babble cliches exist.

Heh, that reminds me of something that happened just a few weeks ago. I was sitting next to a stranger on a plane and for most of the flight, she was nonstop fiddling with a Rubik's Cube at lightning speed (I think she was repeatedly solving it, but since it would be weird to stare, I suppose she might just have been turning it at random) and I actually had the thought that if it had been a movie, this was clearly establishing her as smart (and possibly afraid of flying).

And yeah, I suppose that sort of shorthand is pretty common during character introductions in general, like the funny character that gets a lot of laughs (possibly without letting us hear more than the punchline) or the womanizer who seduces someone with like two lines.

[Prime32]

Unusual case: Index from A Certain Magical Index is a girl with photographic memory who was locked up for most of her life and made to read 103,000 grimoires (normally you're lucky if you survive reading one). This means she can instantly figure out 99% of spells and how to counter them, but has very little knowledge on anything else. She normally can't use magic herself, but she's done things like hijack remote-controlled spells by sending them fake commands.

[Rynjin]

I think Naruto might beat both of them? Him doing the learning by clone absorbtion was pretty early 00s.

It, funnily enough, is ALSO 2006. Specifically, August 2006. So depending on what volume Jamie does it in, the comic version might just barely eke it out.

It's definitely interesting to see some parallel development on the same powerset among authors I'm pretty sure have no idea the other exists.

[gbaji]

Also contribution to the field. You want a doctorate, you gotta bring something to the table and advance the knowledge base yourself. And be prepared to defend that dissertation when you present it.

But yeah, graduate degrees are basically specializing (and maybe even sub-specializing) in your field. Writers giving characters multiple Ph.Ds,while not unbelievable itself, usually just highlights that the writer (or maybe an exec who meddle and insisted) doesn't understand how academia works.

Yup. And there's also a big difference between academic and practical knowledge. The higher the degree, the more specialized the subject becomes and the more narrow that person's specific area of expertise. In some fields (medicine for example), this is then followed up with a lot of practical work. But in some fields? Not so much. Which means that the professor at some university with a PhD in a subject, may be an absolute expert in the one tiny little area they're specialized in, but has less actual knowledge and practical skill in the field in general than some random person with a year or two of experience actually earning money doing the job.


In the "real world" we sometimes refer to this as "unteaching the ivory tower". So... yeah. Just having a boatload of book learning isn't always going to result in someone who is competant at anything (other than rattling off stuff out of a textbook I suppose).

And yeah, your points about actual intelligence and the difficulty of writers expressing this is very valid. Really intelligent people "learn how to learn". They can be exposed to just about anything that they have some knowledge about, and know how to gather information to learn what they don't know, figure out which information is useful and which is not, and then make good decisions based on that. Basically, good critical thinking skills. If you have that, then any raw information you have is powerful and useful. Without it, all you can do is parrot what someone else wrote in a book somewhere. That may be "educated", but does not really qualify as "highly intelligent" in my book.

Very very few writers actually do this well IMO.

[Peelee]

Yup. And there's also a big difference between academic and practical knowledge. The higher the degree, the more specialized the subject becomes and the more narrow that person's specific area of expertise. In some fields (medicine for example), this is then followed up with a lot of practical work. But in some fields? Not so much. Which means that the professor at some university with a PhD in a subject, may be an absolute expert in the one tiny little area they're specialized in, but has less actual knowledge and practical skill in the field in general than some random person with a year or two of experience actually earning money doing the job.


In the "real world" we sometimes refer to this as "unteaching the ivory tower". So... yeah. Just having a boatload of book learning isn't always going to result in someone who is competant at anything (other than rattling off stuff out of a textbook I suppose).

And yeah, your points about actual intelligence and the difficulty of writers expressing this is very valid. Really intelligent people "learn how to learn". They can be exposed to just about anything that they have some knowledge about, and know how to gather information to learn what they don't know, figure out which information is useful and which is not, and then make good decisions based on that. Basically, good critical thinking skills. If you have that, then any raw information you have is powerful and useful. Without it, all you can do is parrot what someone else wrote in a book somewhere. That may be "educated", but does not really qualify as "highly intelligent" in my book.

Very very few writers actually do this well IMO.

Great points. And for a TV example of someone less educated than a doctorate-holder but with better application, MacGuyver is fantastic. IIRC he had a masters in chemical engineering and BS in physics (not pre-chekcing with google is dangerous for me here, so we'll see if my Mac knowledge holds up), but most of his famous "macguyvering" was taking chemistry and physics principles and applying them to real-world scenarios. Or, at least, as "real world" as 80s adventure TV shows could be. I hear teachers and parents loved that show because thr principles were often sound, even if the execution was, well, 80s adventure show, and it did a great job of glorifying education in the sciences.

So yeah, OP, I'm also gonna say Angus MacGuyver for this (dropping his first name to regain some of my street cred if it turns out I got his degree wrong :smalltongue:).

ETA: Dual degree in physics and chemistry, no Masters. I have failed you all.

[Aedilred]

Not someone you'd necessarily think of, but, in his film incarnation at least, James Bond.

While in the early films he sometimes comes unstuck (his mystification at how to disarm the bomb in Goldfinger comes to mind) his level of specific knowledge on niche topics is remarkable even relatively early on, and this in an era when quick lookup was unavailable.

[Ranxerox]

Fu Manchu is shown to be an expert at biology, chemistry, herbology, poisons, medicines and other sundry topics. Also, he is a strong leader who commands a large and diverse organization.

[Divayth Fyr]

The Librarian(s) from the Librarian movie/Librarians tv series probably all could count.

[GloatingSwine]

Ultron kind of did that, though the result was less "I smart" and more "decided humanity needed to perish," which is fair.

Although the Daleks have the advantage that they start from the position that everything that isn't a Dalek needs to perish.

[Doug Lampert]

Also contribution to the field. You want a doctorate, you gotta bring something to the table and advance the knowledge base yourself. And be prepared to defend that dissertation when you present it.

But yeah, graduate degrees are basically specializing (and maybe even sub-specializing) in your field. Writers giving characters multiple Ph.Ds,while not unbelievable itself, usually just highlights that the writer (or maybe an exec who meddle and insisted) doesn't understand how academia works.

That all being said, i did laugh when Thor told Banner to use one of his Ph.D's in that Thor movie.


Without being insulting to the writer, the character cant be smarter than the writer is. Genius in fiction is an illusion. A good writer can pull thr illusion off well. A poor writer just says they have an IQ of 300 and then magically know whatever they need to solve the plot.



Yep. Double-doctors aren't uncommon, even if it's not the same degree. Walk into the medical district in Birmingham and you'll see a good bit of "Lastname MD, Ph.D"

MD/Ph.D isn't redundant though, because there's no research requirement to get the MD, just an enormous amount of specialized knowledge and demonstrated skill. So someone interested in medical research can easily end up with one. (Or the also surprisingly common RN/Ph.D.)

My neice is in a specific program that graduates MD/Ph.D.'s with the Ph.D. being in anthropology or something. I call it the, "I'm never actually going to graduate, graduate school program", but it's her life and the program pays her a decent stipend.

[Peelee]

MD/Ph.D isn't redundant though, because there's no research requirement to get the MD, just an enormous amount of specialized knowledge and demonstrated skill.
I wasn't saying it was redundant. I was playing off the "unless you want to count combinations of PhD, MD, and JD." part of the post I was quoting.


So someone interested in medical research can easily end up with one. (Or the also surprisingly common RN/Ph.D.)
And that's exactly what i said - "double doctor" isn't uncommon. It's not redundant, i just think it's fun to call it "double doctor", since it's two different doctorates.

[Batcathat]

I've always suspected the hardest thing about a doctorate is finding a subject you can focus on for years without getting suicidally bored. The closest I've gotten was for my bachelor and a few months on the same topic was bad enough for me. :smalltongue:

[Chronos]

Ivy, from the Dresden Files books, is the current Archive, which means that she magically knows everything that has ever been written down by humans. In the stories, that knowledge is mostly reflected in that she knows all spells that have ever been written, and thus is one heck of a wizard (though she says that she prefers calculus to magic).

Lazarus Long, from Heinlein's books, is incredibly educated (most of it in the School of Hard Knocks, though I'm sure he has several PhDs or the equivalent in there), by virtue of having lived for thousands of years. There are probably some other immortals who have him beat, though.

[Clertar]

Dr. John Oldman.

[mucat]

Ivy, from the Dresden Files books, is the current Archive, which means that she magically knows everything that has ever been written down by humans. In the stories, that knowledge is mostly reflected in that she knows all spells that have ever been written, and thus is one heck of a wizard (though she says that she prefers calculus to magic).
And a lot of the other wizards in that setting (though not so much Dresden himself) are quite well-educated. Partly by dint of living for multiple centuries, partly because wizardry seems to attract curious minds.

Some of the older wizards seem to have become hidebound and slow to adapt to new knowledge, but others make a point of keeping their minds up-to-date (some even go back to mundane grad schools every few decades for new doctoral degrees in their favorite fields, presumably under a different fake identity each time.)

[mucat]

And even then unless they're implausibly young, [multiple PhDs] would mostly just demonstrate that the person in question had a lot of free time and a lot of money to piss away.
Not so much money as time. A PhD student (in most fields) doesn't pay money to their school; instead they receive a (modest) paycheck in return for their research and teaching work. You could still say that they're paying in "opportunity cost", since the same skills they're using to pursue their PhD would have made them far more money in almost any other line of work.

[Rater202]

Not so much money as time. A PhD student (in most fields) doesn't pay money to their school; instead they receive a (modest) paycheck in return for their research and teaching work. You could still say that they're paying in "opportunity cost", since the same skills they're using to pursue their PhD would have made them far more money in almost any other line of work.

Presumably, if you have PHDS in multiple radically different fields you also have bachelor's and masters in those fields as well.

[Aedilred]

Not so much money as time. A PhD student (in most fields) doesn't pay money to their school; instead they receive a (modest) paycheck in return for their research and teaching work. You could still say that they're paying in "opportunity cost", since the same skills they're using to pursue their PhD would have made them far more money in almost any other line of work.

Well, most PhDs do cost money. A lot of money. A PhD in chemical engineering at Cambridge, for instance, costs £17,000 per annum in payments to the college, unless you're an overseas student in which case it's £41,000. Humanities courses are generally cheaper, but still around the £10K/year mark for home students. Cambridge also requires you to be able to show that you have resources to maintain yourself at a minimum of £17K per year. But almost all PhDs that are worthwhile are eligible for funding, and because few people have that kind of money lying around to pay for a PhD, most people who actually do them get said funding before doing the PhD, in which case the funder pays both the course fee and at least the majority of the maintenance, with the balance being made up of independent resources and teaching work.

That is, I believe, pretty typical for England. Course fees may be lower in Scotland but I think the principle is the same. I don't know about the US.

[DavidSh]

My own PhD program (in the US, back in the 20th century) was fully funded, first by a National Science Foundation fellowship, then by a research assistantship on my advisor's grant. A lot of the other students in the program had teaching assistantships. I would have made a poor TA.

[paradox26]

Dr John Oldman from The Man From Earth. He is very old, though not especially brilliant by his own statement. He has something like ten doctorates. As he said, "Having the doctorates doesn't make me a genius, I just had time."

As for real life, I got partway through a doctorate before I had to give it up. That was because I would have needed to learn both Cambodian and Korean languages to an academic standard, which wasn't practical. Anyway, the Australian government pays the costs for all research degrees, and there are grants available to pay living expenses as well, though I wasn't eligible for the grant.

[Giggling Ghast]

There was that one dalek that downloaded the entire internet.


Ultron kind of did that, though the result was less "I smart" and more "decided humanity needed to perish," which is fair.

Understandable, I’d probably think the same thing.

[LibraryOgre]

A contender would be Michael Holt aka Mr. Terrific. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Terrific_(Michael_Holt)) His meta power is stated as being "a natural aptitude for having natural aptitudes."

[HolyDraconus]

I would argue that a practical more grounded educated person would be Senku Ishigami from Dr. Stone. Well versed in a myriad of subjects, actually SHOWS that he's versed in them and not just say "trust me bro, I is smart" and is one of the few anime (that I know of) that was censored NOT because girls but because of the subject matter (making gunpowder and bombs, ACCURATELY).

[Mastikator]

Janet from The Good Place might count as the most educated since she knows all that can be known. But it's not clear to me whether she qualifies as a person.

[Peelee]

Janet from The Good Place might count as the most educated since she knows all that can be known. But it's not clear to me whether she qualifies as a person.

Not a person. [/janet]

[Ionathus]

Dr. Patrick McNinja from The Adventures of Doctor McNinja has a PHD and/or MD in literally every subject except for Agriculture via an exploit involving mass cloning and then recombining with said clones.

He's often shown using his vast array of scientific knowledge(at least by in-universe standards) to solve problems.

This is a fantastic example. I enjoyed the flashback where Dr. McNinja as an undergrad says "I just wish I could study EVERYTHING!" and his academic advisor (a clone of Ben Franklin) said "well as luck would have it..."

McNinja's numerous PhDs don't come up in-comic a ton, but it's a fun character trait at least, and using science/magic to justify dozens of Doctorates is still more believable than "I had twelve PhDs by age 20" which...is just physically impossible due to the time required (looking at YOU, recently-introduced QC character!).


It's weird that fiction writers feel that this method of telling us is better than showing them doing something smart.


Without being insulting to the writer, the character cant be smarter than the writer is. Genius in fiction is an illusion. A good writer can pull thr illusion off well. A poor writer just says they have an IQ of 300 and then magically know whatever they need to solve the plot.

Ding ding! This was one of the first pieces of creative writing advice I got: don't try to write geniuses. Your characters can be more athletic, attractive, or brave than you, but being smart requires narrative depictions of being smart, and the limiting factor there is you as the writer.

The most successful iterations of this are when a character is established as being highly educated or an expert in a specific branch of knowledge, which the writer can at least google while writing the book and have the character "spontaneously" know it in the moment.


Great points. And for a TV example of someone less educated than a doctorate-holder but with better application, MacGuyver is fantastic. IIRC he had a masters in chemical engineering and BS in physics (not pre-chekcing with google is dangerous for me here, so we'll see if my Mac knowledge holds up), but most of his famous "macguyvering" was taking chemistry and physics principles and applying them to real-world scenarios. Or, at least, as "real world" as 80s adventure TV shows could be. I hear teachers and parents loved that show because thr principles were often sound, even if the execution was, well, 80s adventure show, and it did a great job of glorifying education in the sciences.

MacGyver is an excellent example. His encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry and physics (and their practical applications) was well-used in the show and quite charming in my experience.

I'd also add Mark Watney to this realm. Highly educated in numerous niche fields, which he uses to survive with limited resources (his breadth of knowledge strains credulity TBH, but astronauts are assumed to be smart already and the point of the story is a competence/Castaway-in-Space fantasy anyway so I didn't mind).


Janet from The Good Place might count as the most educated since she knows all that can be known. But it's not clear to me whether she qualifies as a person.

I don't think Janet or other omniscient entities count: the question is "educated", which means knowledge that you had to work to learn over time. Beings that just "know" everything already are kind of cheating the prompt.

Honestly a better example from The Good Place might be
Tahani in training to be an Architect. She has mastered basically every skill on her immensely long list and become an expert in essentially every thing there is for a human to know, and is now moving on to literally superhuman topics. Granted, she had the entire breadth of infinity to work on it, but hey. Still counts.

[LibraryOgre]

We might also mention Pug, from the Midkemia novels by Raymond Feist, who apparently absorbed the knowledge of all his possible alternate selves.

[gbaji]

Ding ding! This was one of the first pieces of creative writing advice I got: don't try to write geniuses. Your characters can be more athletic, attractive, or brave than you, but being smart requires narrative depictions of being smart, and the limiting factor there is you as the writer.

Well, maybe *you* can't write geniuses.... I kid! Maybe... :smallcool:


The most successful iterations of this are when a character is established as being highly educated or an expert in a specific branch of knowledge, which the writer can at least google while writing the book and have the character "spontaneously" know it in the moment.

Yeah. That is a better approach. Tons of examples of writers getting this horribly wrong too though. There is a difference between knowing facts and knowing how to apply them. It's the later bit that writers can mess themselves up with (and make it ridiculously obvious that they don't understand what they're writing about at all).

[Prime32]

Ding ding! This was one of the first pieces of creative writing advice I got: don't try to write geniuses. Your characters can be more athletic, attractive, or brave than you, but being smart requires narrative depictions of being smart, and the limiting factor there is you as the writer.

The most successful iterations of this are when a character is established as being highly educated or an expert in a specific branch of knowledge, which the writer can at least google while writing the book and have the character "spontaneously" know it in the moment.
You can also get away with depicting a character as intelligent because they can handle straightforward but involved tasks very quickly (e.g. multiplying large numbers), since the writer can take as much time on them as they need.

The most recent volume of Invaders of the Rokujouma had an afterword where the author bemoaned that while he had many smart characters in his cast they each had different kinds of intelligence, and the master strategist was always the hardest to write. For engineers and the like he could just spout technobabble, but for her he needed to put in a lot of time and effort coming up with tactics that the audience can both understand and see as clever. In the end her big strategy in that book still relied on fictional technology (replacing bombs an enemy army had planted on their base's shield generator with dummies, faking an explosion, and then flushing out the enemy commander and reactivating the shield to trap his squad inside and take him hostage).

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah, there's a certain level of genius that you can do pretty well by taking things like Googling, having more time to think about stuff, and bouncing ideas off of other people, and then having the character do all of that on their own. They just know stuff you have to research, they arrive at conclusions quickly, and they can come up with ideas that you needed collaboration to arrive at.

Also, you know the plot, so you can to a degree have the character deduce exactly what they need to know.

It doesn't always work (see: Sherlock Holmes having enormous leaps of logic) but it can definitely work.