The Smart Guy / With an IQ that�s off the charts and a regular-guy lifestyle, Chris Langan is not your average genius; SIDEBAR: A Radical View Of The Universe (SEE END OF TEXT)

IF YOU'VE GOTTEN out of line at any number of eastern Long

Island bars or nightclubs in the past two decades, there's a good chance that

Chris Langan was the guy tossing you through the doors. Unlike most bouncers,

however, Langan probably could calculate your exact trajectory and total air

displacement before you even hit the ground.

That's because Langan is a certified genius, tested as having an IQ of at

least 195 and quite possibly much higher. The adult average IQ is 100. The

"genius" level of 175 occurs in 1 in a million people; an IQ that tests in the

range of 195 or higher occurs 1 in several billion. That impressive score could

very well make him the smartest man in America and quite possibly the world.

This distinction has earned him appearances on ABC's "20/20" and in the

pages of the London Times and Esquire. You'd find someone of Langan's intellect

holed up in a lab somewhere or in front of a group of students, possibly

teaching physics. Instead, you're far more likely to encounter him stationed at

a door, checking IDs, or clad in a leather jacket as he tools around on his

Harley-Davidson.

Upon meeting the 40-something Langan at the Westhampton Grill, a bar where

he works, it's clear that his burly, 6-foot, 250-pound frame is up to the

physical task of bouncing. Within moments of speaking to him about particle

physics, and about the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe, his "theory

of everything," it's just as clear that his amazing mental skills are being

underutilized. Of course, there are few jobs that could actually push his

intellect to the limit.

Unlikely as it is that Langan ended up in this line of work, it's no more

unusual than any number of other jobs he's held. In addition to working the

door at numerous nightclubs, Langan's also been a farmhand, a construction

worker, a firefighter and a lifeguard; he's even been a horse whisperer and a

cowboy. He has spent most of his life in a very blue-collar, working-man mode

of existence. While other geniuses such as Albert Einstein and

turn-of-the-century wunderkind William Sidis spent time in office jobs and

other fairly pedestrian careers, it's still nearly impossible to imagine either

of them making a living by tossing unruly drunks.

Despite some interest from the "Guinness Book of Records" and a British

show called "Record Breakers" in the '80s, Langan was able to live a pretty

much anonymous, blue-collar existence until Esquire magazine decided to do a

"Genius Issue" in 1999. When the magazine asked prominent members of the

high-IQ community who should be interviewed, Langan's name consistently popped

up.

After he was featured there, "20/20" came looking for him and wanted to

verify his IQ. The results: He had broken the ceiling on the conventional IQ

tests he was given; his intellect was immeasurable by ordinary standards.

Yet, rather than parlay his new fame into riches or status, Langan has

taken it all in stride, barely letting it affect his everyday existence. He

still works as a bouncer and still is the same old Chris that people have known

for years.

Kevin McDonagh, who has worked with Langan for 20 years, including a

current stint together at the Westhampton Grill, knew he was unique from day

one. "The first thing I noticed besides his size was that he was the only

bouncer I knew who ever showed up for his shift with books," McDonagh says.

"And they were always on quantum physics or something else that most of us

hadn't even heard of yet. Just from the way he talks, you can tell how

intelligent he is, but he never plays it up. Around us, he's just one of the

guys."

Early in life, Langan indeed seemed to be on the way to a lifetime spent in

academic pursuits. He began speaking at 6 months, taught himself to read at 3,

and was repeatedly skipped ahead in grade school.

From all indicators, it seemed he would end up doing something far more

scholarly. But along with the advantages of his genius came the disadvantages

of a rough childhood. Langan and his three siblings lived well below the

poverty level. Their mother was cut off from her family, and Langan's father

disappeared before he was born.

His brother Jeff recalls their struggle growing up. "It was rough.

Impoverished would be the way to describe it." Yet he also notes the poverty

didn't slow Chris' development. "As long as I can remember, he always got A's

in school. I remember when we were little kids and he'd be reading adult books

at 4 years old."

His mother remarried; Langan has few fond memories of his stepfather. "When

I was a kid, I was conditioned against showing any signs of brilliance,"

Langan recalls. "My stepfather constantly asked me difficult questions, and

when I'd give him correct answers to those questions, he'd bat me in the mouth

or something of that nature to let me know he didn't appreciate a guy trying to

be smarter than he was."

SCHOOL WAS NO HAVEN for the budding genius, either. Langan, whom teachers

would praise for his college-level work, says he was picked on by peers - not

only because of his intellect, but because he was usually dressed in tattered

clothing and showed signs of abuse.

"I'd go to gym class covered with welts and bruises, and you know, kids can

be cruel. That was in addition to dressing like a ragamuffin - I didn't have a

pair of mated socks to my name, and the front of my hand-me-down tennis shoes

were torn open. They'd see all that, and sometimes they'd come at me like a

school of piranha. That's when I turned to the weights."

Langan began strength training when he was 12, immediately fell in love

with the benefits of bodybuilding, and has worked out ever since. For a while

in the late '90s, he was novelist Tom Wolfe's training partner at a gym in

Southampton.

In addition to being one of the world's smartest men, he's also incredibly

strong, and recently got the chance to show off his training methods and

impressive physique in a Muscle and Fitness magazine profile. Most geniuses

don't boast a 500-pound bench press, but that hardly surprises him.

"A lot of cerebral people don't have a grasp on the physical side of life,"

he says. "They're likely to be sheltered in one way or another. They also

consider any time away from their intellectual labors to be time wasted. I find

that ridiculous. Changing gears every now and then can do the mind a lot of

good."

While Langan's newfound muscle helped end the abuse from schoolmates, his

academic pursuits were thwarted. Even though the family moved more than a dozen

times before Langan finished high school, he still managed to earn a full

scholarship to Reed College in Portland, Ore. But several snafus concerning his

financial aid status and a staggering bureaucracy made it impossible for

Langan to finish his first year at Reed, and later interfered with his studies

at Montana State University. He left, and never finished college.

"I had some bad experiences in high school and college which caused me to

become totally disgusted with the intellectual mainstream," Langan says. "I

became a regular guy, more or less, throughout my 20s."

That led him to a string of jobs, mostly hard labor, where he didn't have

to exploit his genius at all. A call from an old girlfriend on Long Island led

him to a job bouncing at a local bar more than 20 years ago, and he's been here

ever since. But about a decade ago, he was overcome by feelings of emptiness

and urgency that he couldn't dismiss. Langan started to feel as if he'd been

squandering a precious gift.

"I began to experience feelings of 'time is running out,' and guilt over

the fact that there was something I had to do that wasn't getting done. So I

gradually worked myself back into an intellectual frame of mind, and started

doing what was inside of me to do."

What was inside him was his grand theory of the cosmos, the Cognitive

Theoretic Model of the Universe (or CTMU for short). Conveying it in layman's

terms is no easy task. Although his theory about the relationship between

theories and observations is revolutionary stuff, Langan is already finding

some approval among the scientific community. Theoretical physicist and former

NASA executive Robert N. Seitz recently corresponded with Langan and is

impressed with his theory.

"If I've ever met anyone brighter than Chris, I don't know who it would

be," Seitz says. "Every physicist is inundated with amateurs' 'Theories of

Everything,' but Chris' CTMU is very, very different."

Langan feels that the CTMU is important because it adds to science an

ethical component that may prove useful in dealing with such Orwellian issues

as cloning and other forms of genetic engineering. "I think science is rapidly

outstripping the sophistication of our ethical systems. I don't think we have

any understanding of what constraints we should impose on science, if any. We

need an overarching philosophy that provides us with a scientific theory of

ethics that we can apply to some of these questions." He hopes to publish his

theoretical applications of logic to science, theology and the nature of time

in a book titled "Design for a Universe."

His usual workday (or night) consists of a late shift bouncing at the bar,

followed by a brainstorming session at home sitting at his cramped desk until

mid-morning, when he takes a nap to let his mind wander creatively. After

awakening in the afternoon, he works a little more, maybe goes to the gym and

then gets ready for another night shift at the bar. While it's hardly a normal

workday, after 20 years of closing bars, he can't work any other way.

But once people have a chance to access his work, all the odd hours will

have been worth it. To Langan, getting the book published will be a far more

important distinction than his rep as the "world's smartest man."

"What's in a name, or a title? I may or may not be the world's smartest

man, but certainly I do know this: My intellectual self-opinion has very little

to do with my IQ scores. It has much more to do with my theories. DaVinci,

Newton and Einstein did great things with their minds, but never took IQ tests.

Can someone who merely scores well on an IQ test call himself the same kind of

genius as they were? I don't think so. You've got to have great ideas."

Langan is seeking a publisher, but if necessary will publish the book

himself through the Mega Foundation, a high-IQ organization that he and his

girlfriend, Gina LoSasso, run from their small cottage in Westhampton. LoSasso

is also a genius with an IQ that has tested as high as 182. She holds a PhD in

clinical psychology with a specialty in neuropsychology (the biological basis

of behavior), and definitely found her match in the rough-hewn Langan.

"We met through the UltraHIQ world when Chris applied to join one of the

high-IQ societies. He applied to me as the membership officer. He was very well

known in the UltraHIQ circles, but I didn't realize that and spent a few weeks

checking his credentials," she says with a smile. "He was very patient. We

became friends very quickly because of our outspoken personality styles. We

also enjoyed each other's sense of humor."

LoSasso says their relationship is "extremely enjoyable because we share

many of the same interests and have different areas of expertise, so there's a

lot to learn from each other. It's also very comfortable from a romantic

perspective. Chris is very strong, but also sensitive and caring."

EVEN THOUGH Langan is hardly wealthy (he usually lives on less than $10,000

a year), he has taken steps to help those who might be in the same boat he was

all those years ago. One of those steps is the Mega Foundation (not to be

confused with Mensa, which has a lower-IQ threshold than the near-genius

requirement for Langan's organization).

In addition to being a meeting place for geniuses and interested onlookers,

the Mega Foundation also is a nonprofit charitable corporation dedicated to

the gifted population, especially the "forgotten gifted" who have been ignored

or frustrated in their attempts to find an outlet for their ideas and opinions.

"As an alternative to academia, we ultimately intend to receive sizable

grants and donate money and equipment to gifted people," Langan says. The

foundation already has awarded small grants and launched several projects, he

says, including "a research study on severely gifted adults, a music CD and an

Internet radio station for the gifted, and a global UltraHIQ community that

interacts through discussions, e-zines and forums on more than 500 linked Web

pages."

Is being a super genius the only way to impress the Mega Foundation? Langan

says the group is very particular, but "you can also get in if you're

artistically or musically talented, or gifted in any other field of art or

science. And if you have a theory that you believe is somehow new or dynamic,

we may look at that as well."

Langan also is working with a new company called Virtual Logistix (based in

a Southampton garage), where he is using his self-taught knowledge of

artificial intelligence to help create, among other things, a smarter search

engine for the Web.

One of his associates on the project, Joseph De Bellis, considers Langan's

input invaluable. "The amazing thing with Chris is that he can absorb things

so easily, and then just offer a tremendous amount of insight on a number of

different levels. We call him the intellectual gauntlet here. If a concept can

get by him, we know it's flawless."

If it seems Langan is spreading himself thin these days, he's at least

taking better care of his brain and the body that houses it by putting safety

first. "When I came out here in the '80s, I worked at a lot of the more

prominent bars and beach clubs. Because I was sometimes the only bouncer on

staff and had to face more than one guy at a time, I was taking a lot of hits -

walking out at the end of the night with bloody noses, black eyes, that kind

of thing.

"But this place [the Westhampton Grill] is a genteel sports bar. It's rare

that I have to actually throw someone out of here. As far as the bloodbath

clubs that I used to work in are concerned, I won't have anything to do with

those anymore. Since I became famous a year and a half ago," he says with a

sarcastic smile, "I've had too much to lose to put myself through any more of

that nonsense."

He may eventually give up the bouncing if the book and the foundation catch

on, but don't expect to find him seeking riches on game shows such as

"Jeopardy!" or "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

"A high IQ is more about problem solving than knowledge of trivia," he

says. "A lot of people think, 'Wow, that person has a 200 IQ, so he'll do great

on 'Jeopardy!' But it doesn't necessarily work out that way."

To contact Langan or the Mega Foundation try: www.ctmu.org or

www.megafoundation.org.

A Radical View Of The Universe

FOR A DECADE, Chris Langan has been working on his Cognitive Theoretic Model of

the Universe (CTMU). I asked him to take a stab at expressing his theory in

layman's terms.

"The CTMU," he began, "is a metatheory about the general relationship

between theories and observations ... i.e., about science, knowledge and

cognition themselves. A comprehensive theory of reality is not just about

observation, but theories and their logical requisites. Mind and reality are

linked in mutual dependence on the most basic level of understanding. Since

reality forever retains the ability to surprise us, the task of scientific

observation can never be completed with absolute certainty, and this means that

a comprehensive theory of reality cannot be based on scientific observation

alone. Instead, reality theory must be based on the logic underlying the

general process of making scientific observations. Since observation comes down

to the relationship of mind and reality, the CTMU is an account of that

relationship.

"Ordinary scientific theories, even those about subjective phenomena like

human cognition, emotion and consciousness, tend to focus on the objective and

exclude the subjective. Still in the grip of Cartesian mind-body dualism, which

holds that mind and body are forever separate, science dismisses the

possibility that mind plays a meaningful role in the existence of reality,

neglecting the mind's essential nature in favor of its more accessible physical

correlates. In contrast, the CTMU is a scientific theory of the mind-reality

relationship that recognizes the importance of mind and thought in shaping the

universe.

"In explaining this relationship, the CTMU shows that reality possesses a

complex property akin to self-awareness; just as the mind is real, reality is

in some respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious

question 'Whose mind?' the answer turns out to qualify by reasonable standards

as a mathematical and scientific definition of God. This implies that we all

exist in what can be called 'the Mind of God,' and that our individual minds

are parts of this universal mind. As such, they are directly connected to the

greatest source of knowledge and power that exists. This connection of our

minds to the Mind of God, which we sometimes call the soul or spirit, is the

most essential part of being human."

Noticing my bewilderment, Langan laughed and added, "Did you ever watch

'Star Trek'? Remember Mr. Spock from Vulcan, and the Vulcan religion of pure

logic? Well, this is pretty much it!"