[btilly]

There is no surprise here. As http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.htm... makes clear, we consider someone "intelligent" because they possess many abilities of interest. But the possession of one ability (eg mathematical reasoning) is not well correlated with the possession of another (eg verbal ability). Unless you possess all of those, you won't score at the top in IQ.

But to excel in any specific field does NOT so much require top mental abilities of all kinds as exceptional ones required by that field. Not having a decent baseline of all abilities will be a handicap - you need that - but a Richard Feynman does not need to be a genius grammatically.

IQ tests are a very limited tool. They test a breadth of abilities and can indicate that you can do reasonably well at many things. (Indeed for a wide range of jobs, an IQ test is a better predictor of performance than your performance on the job interview!) However they can't recognize that you're truly exceptional at any particular thing.