16 Brilliant Women Who Prove SMART Is The New Hot

Not long ago, I did a similar article to this, but about men. This pretty much just required me to look up "smartest men" and other similar key terms, and so the smartest men came up. Pretty straight forward.

Now, when I typed in "smartest women," you want to know what came up? For one, the smartest women, but even more than that "the HOTTEST smart women."

There were multiple articles like this.

Seriously, WTF internet? Why is that ALWAYS a top factor when it comes to women?

At the very least, why wasn't "the HOTTEST smart men" an article I came across immediately?

I like smart people! I like eye candy! I mean, at the very least, if you're going to focus on hot women no matter what, the LEAST you can do ("you" being the magical mystical entity that is the internet/society) is focus just as much on hot men! And if you identify as a sapiosexual (or even if you don't), brains probably make someone at least 35% hotter anyway!

EQUALITY, HAVE YOU HEARD OF IT??

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being hot and smart (at ALL) but COME ON! Why not just list them as smart and people will notice whether or not they find them attractive, OKAY??

Okay, I'm done. I just had to get that out because UGH WHY IS THIS STILL A THING????

Here's my list:

1. Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling has written for some of your on-screen favorites, like The Office, Saturday Night Live, and of course her own awesome show, The Mindy Project. Oh right, and this comedic genius graduated from Dartmouth.

2. Judit Polgar

​

At the age of 15, Hungarian Judit Polgár became the youngest chess Grandmaster ever, breaking the record previously held by former World Champion Bobby Fischer. The now-40-year-old has an IQ of 170.

3. Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles received degrees from Harvard University, Emory University, and the University of Minnesota, all with flying colors, is a professor, and has published multiple books. What makes her extra-amazing is that she has a focus on improving relations between African-Americans and Native Americans. Her life goal is to provide more materials for people to learn and understand the histories of the various cultures that are amazing but vastly overlooked. 

4. Tina Fey

Fine, so maybe I'm bias, but Tina Fey is one of the MOST hilarious minds behind SNL, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mean Girls, Sisters, and so much more. She not only acts, but she writes and produces! You've gotta give it up for a woman with a smart sense of humor!

5. Phiona Mutesi

​

You may have heard of her from the recently released movie Queen of Katwe — Phiona Mutesi, 20, is a Ugandan chess champion known as a prodigy. (Her talents were "discovered" when she was a teen.

6. Amy Poehler

So this might be another one of my biases for hilarious feminist writer/actress women. Come on, you couldn't expect me to love Tina Fey without loving Amy, could you? THEY'RE SISTERS FROM OTHER MISTERS! The way they take down the stupidity of the patriarchies ... totally swoon-worthy. 

7. Yoky Matsuoka

​

​Yoky Matsuoka was the former VP of Technology at Nest, a co-founder of Google X Lab, when Apple snatched her up. Her work focuses on robotics and neuroscience. She's a true-blue genius: She was named a MacArthur Fellow, aka "Genius Award," in 2007 f

8. Alia Sabur

​

​A materials scientist now, Alia Sabur entered her PhD program at age 14, and at age 18,1 she was appointed a professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, Korea, which gave her the title of youngest professor in the Guinness Book of Records in 2007.

9. Edith Stern

Edith Stern was raised to be a genius. No kidding. Her father declared he would raise the perfect human being (aka the smartest). She had read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica by age 5 and graduated college at 12. She has an IQ over 200 — the highest of any woman. Did I mention she's an activist?

10. Mayim Bialik

The child actress (remember Blossom and Beaches?) turned grownup actress (The Big Bang Theory) has a doctorate in neuroscience. She also blogs (quite brilliantly) over at Kveller, and last year launched her own lifestyle website, GrokNation.

11. Warson Shire

You've got to be damn amazing to catch Beyonce's attention with words alone — and Warson Shire did. She's the woman behind most of the poetry of Beyonce's amazing Lemonade film. There is no doubt that she's an amazing poet, and she got the awards to approve it.

12. Lisa Randall

Lisa Randall is a theoretical physicist who teaches physics at Harvard University. She was named one of the top 100 most influential people of all time in TIME magazine.

13. Brittney Exline​​

When she was 19, Brittney Exline became the youngest African-American engineer. And before that, while she was in high school? She was studying at Harvard as well. Yeah.

14. Michiko Kakutani

​

​This Pulitizer-Prize winning writer has been reviewing books for the New York Times since 1983. She's even been known to write her reviews in the voice of the books' characters. Only a great writer could pull that off without looking silly.

15. Vinodhini Vasudevan

​

​How did you spend your summer vacation when you were 5 years old? Vinodhini spent hers reading 100 books, and at the age of 8 she mastered college algebra, and at age 12 she got a perfect score on the SAT. Another thing that proves how smart she is: The now 29-year-old  doesn't want all of the excess fame and attention she COULD get because she seems to like her privacy. Now that's a smart cookie!

16. Oprah Winfrey

Does Oprah even need an introduction? SHE'S OPRAH!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson were just a few of the women behind actually getting people into space for the first time with NASA. And FINALLY, there's a movie coming out all about it. About dang time, too!