Brainiacs - MENSA members on the IMDb.

Isaac Asimov was born Isaak Judah Ozimov, on January 2, 1920, in Petrovichi shtetl, near Smolensk, Russia. He was the oldest of three children. His father, named Judah Ozimov, and his mother, named Anna Rachel Ozimov (nee Berman), were Orthodox Jews. Ozimov family were millers (the name Ozimov comes from the eponymous sort of wheat in Russian). In 1923 Isaac with his parents immigrated to the USA and settled in Brooklyn, New York. There his parents temporarily changed his birthday to September 7, 1919, in order to send him to school a year earlier. Their family name was changed from Ozimov to Asimov.

Asimov was an avid reader before the age of 5. He spoke Yiddish and English at home with his parents and spoke only a few word in Russian. He began his formal education in 1925 in the New York Public School system. From 1930-1932 he was placed in the rapid advance course. In 1935 he graduated from high school, in 1939 received a B.S. and in 1941 he earned his M. Sc. in Chemistry from Columbia University. From 1942-1945 Asimov was a chemist at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard's Naval Air experimental station. After the war ended, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and was transfered to the island of Oahu and was destined to participate in the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in July 1946. He narrowly avoided that by receiving an honorable discharge in May 1946. In 1948 he completed his post-graduate studies and earned his Ph. D. in Chemistry. In 1949 he began his teaching career at the Medical School of Boston University, becoming assistant professor in 1951, and associate professor in 1955. In 1958 Asimov became a full-time writer and gave up his teaching duties because his income from his literary works was much greater than his professor's salary. He was fired, but he retained his title and later returned as a lecturer and was promoted to the rank of full professor in 1979. Asimov was considered one of the best lecturers at Boston University.

Young Isaac Asimov was raised as a non-religious person. His parents observed the Orthodox Judaism, but did not force their belief upon young Asimov. He did not have affiliation with a temple, did not have a bar mizvah and called himself an atheist, then used the term "humanist" in his later life. He did not oppose genuine religious convictions in others but opposed superstitious or unfounded beliefs. Asimov defined his intellectual position as a Humanist and rationalist. He opposed the Vietnam war in the 1960s and was a supporter of the Democratic party. He embraced environmental issues, and supported feminism, joking that he wished women to be free "because I hate it when they charge". He was also humorous about many of his memberships in various clubs and foundations. Asimov did not approve exclusionary societies, he left Mensa after he found that many of the members were arrogant. He liked individuality and stayed in groups where he enjoyed giving speeches. As a free thinker, Asimov saw sci-fi literature serving as a pool where ideas and hypotheses are expressed with unrestricted intellectual freedom.

Young Asimov was fascinated with science fiction magazines which were sold at his parent's general store. Around the age of 11 he wrote eight chapters of a fiction about adventures of young boys in a small town. His first publication was "Marooned Off Vesta" in the Amazing Stories magazine in 1939. Asimov shot to fame in 1941 with 'Nightfall', a story of a planet where night comes once every 2049 years. 'Nightfall' has been described as one of the best science fiction stories ever written. Asimov wrote over five hundred literary works. He is credited for introducing the words "positronic", "psychohistory", and "robotics" into the English language. He penned such classics as "I, Robot" and the "Foundation" series, which are considered to be the most impressive of his writings. He also founded "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine", which became a best-selling publication.

Asimov was afraid of needles and the sight of blood. Although he had the highest score on the intelligence test he had the lowest score on the physical-conditioning test. He never learned how to swim or ride a bicycle. The author who described spaceflights suffered from fear of flying. In his entire life he had to fly only twice during his military service. Acrophobia was revealed when he took his date and first love on a roller coaster in 1940, and was terrified. This phobia complicated the logistics and limited the range over which he traveled; it also found reflection in some of his literary works. He avoided traveling long distances. Instead he enjoyed cruise ships like the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, where he occasionally entertained passengers with his science-themed talks. He impressed public with his highly entertaining speeches as well as with his sharp sense of timing; he never looked at the clock, but he spoke for precisely the time allocated. Asimov's sense of time prevented him from ever being late to a meeting. Once he discovered that his parents changed his date of birth, he insisted that the official records of his birthday be corrected to January 2, 1920, the date he personally celebrated throughout his life.

Asimov met Gertrude Blugherman on a blind date on Valentine's Day in February of 1942, they got married in July of the same year. The Asimovs had two children, son David (born in 1951), and daughter Robyn Joan (born in 1955). Asimov had known Janet Opal Jeppson since 1959. She was a psychoanalyst and also a writer of science fiction for children. Correspondence with her convinced Asimov that she was the right kind of person for him. He and Gertrude were separated in 1970, and he moved in with Janet Jappeson almost at once. His first marriage ended in divorce in 1973. That same year he and Janet Jeppson were married at Janet's home by an official of Ethical Culture Society. Asimov had no children by his second marriage.

In 1983 Asimov contracted HIV infection from a tainted blood transfusion received during a triple bypass surgery. He eventually developed AIDS and wanted to go public about his AIDS but his doctors convinced Asimov to remain silent. The specific cause of death was heart and renal failure as complications of AIDS. He died on April 6, 1992, in Boston, Massachussets, and was cremated. His ashes were scattered.

Ten years after Asimov's death, his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov, revealed that his death was a consequence of an unfortunately contracted AIDS.

Yank Azman was born on 19 October 1947. He is an actor, known for My Life as a Dog (1995), The Great Defender (1995) and Side Effects (1994).

Discovered and signed at age 16 by music impresario Rick Rubin, Derek Barbosa was born in New Jersey to a Puerto Rican father and a Black mother. Performing with the stage name "Chino XL", he was often referred to as "the Lyrical Messiah", coined from a song off his 2006 album "Poison Pen". After releasing his 1996 debut album, "Here To Save You All" (with chart topping singles and top rated videos aired on MTV), he took a decidedly different journey in making his follow up and subsequently parted ways with Rubin's American Recordings label to sign to Warner Bros. Records. However, as a result of Prince's public legal battle and departure from WB, the Black Music department was folded and Chino realized he, too needed a new home for his music. The long awaited follow up "I Told You So" - produced while at Warner - was released independently and become an instant classic, despite its release date of September 11, 2001 ( or "9/11" - the day of the attack and destruction of Manhattan's World Trade Center).

Barbosa took a hiatus from writing and recording and turned his sights and creative inspiration to acting. Over the next 4 years, he would appear in film roles as varied as low budget indie films to both comedic and dramatic guest appearances on network television to co-starring opposite Kate Hudson and Luke Wilson in director Rob Reiner's "Alex & Emma"; a Warner Bros. release.

His manager, Stacey Castro decided it was time for Chino to return to making music and the duo worked for two years to create his third and longest awaited release, "Poison Pen", which arrived to critical acclaim and followed suit in attaining cult status as did his previous two albums. Copies of 1996's "Here To Save You All" still sell to this day. Barbosa has toured with a range of artists as diverse as Alanis Morissette to Pitbull and Faith Hill to Snoop Dog He signed with Universal Music from 2007 - 2009.

He is a member of MENSA and his uncle is funk maestro Bernie Worrell.

Theodore Bikel is one of the most versatile and respected actors and performers of his generation. A master of languages, dialects and accents, he has played every sort of film villain and semi-bad guy imaginable, and always adds depth, dimension and even sympathy to characters that would end up as cardboard cutouts in the hands of lesser actors. His memorable supporting roles include a German naval officer in The African Queen (1951), the king of Serbia in Moulin Rouge (1952) and a German submarine officer in The Enemy Below (1957). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Defiant Ones (1958). Equally at home on the stage, Bikel is remembered for creating the role of Captain Von Trapp in the original Broadway cast of "The Sound of Music" opposite Mary Martin. He also appeared on stage in "Tonight in Samarkand", "The Lark" and "The Rope Dancers". Bikel is fluent in more than half a dozen European and Middle Eastern languages, and sings folk songs in nearly 20 languages, skillfully accompanying himself on guitar, mandolin, balalaika and harmonica. He was a regular on the early 1960s TV show Hootenanny (1963), a weekly cavalcade of folk music. Over the years he has performed on college campuses and in concert halls all over the country, and has recorded a number of record albums of folk music from around the world.

As a child, Geena dreamed of being an actress. While in high school, she felt left out and had low self-esteem because, at 6 feet, she was the tallest girl in school. After high school graduation, Geena entered New England College in New Hampshire and then transferred the next year to Boston University, where she majored in drama. In 1979, she dropped out and moved to New York to start her career. Her career consisted of sales clerk and waitress. She worked at Ann Taylor, where she eventually rose to Saturday window mannequin while trying to get a job with a modeling agency. Eventually signed by the Zoli Agency, she wound up as a model in the Victoria Secret's Catalogue. Ever vigilant, Sydney Pollack was looking for new talent in the catalog when he spotted Geena and cast her in Tootsie (1982). With good reviews, Geena moved to Los Angeles where she was cast as Wendy in the short-lived but critically acclaimed television series Buffalo Bill (1983) with Dabney Coleman. Her next appearance on television was in her own series Sara (1985), which was also good, but soon canceled. Geena then returned to the big screen in the below-average Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) followed by the successful Chevy Chase movie Fletch (1985). From there on, she was on a roll with husband Jeff Goldblum in the horror remake The Fly (1986). More successful were Tim Burton's dark comedy Beetlejuice (1988) and The Accidental Tourist (1988). For the last film, she was the surprise winner of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. More fun movies followed with the flying-saucer-in-the-pool Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) and everyone-loves-a-clown Quick Change (1990) with Bill Murray. The very successful Thelma & Louise (1991), directed by Ridley Scott, again garnered nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe. A League of Their Own (1992), with Tom Hanks and directed by Penny Marshall, was the turning point as her next film, Hero (1992), was only average. Then she married director Renny Harlin and they set up a production and development company called "The Forge." Their first film was Speechless (1994), which flopped at the box office. Undeterred, Renny decided to film the big-budget Cutthroat Island (1995), starring Geena as pirate leader Morgan, which also flopped. Geena has since starred in the thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and played Eleanor Little in Stuart Little (1999) and Stuart Little 2 (2002). She's also returned to TV, headlining The Geena Davis Show (2000) and Commander in Chief (2005). Both shows were canceled after one season, but she won a Golden Globe for the latter. In 2008, after being missed from the big screen for some years, Geena ventured to Sydney, Australia, playing the foul-mouthed mother of Harry Cook and Harrison Sloan Gilbertson to shoot the dark comedy Accidents Happen (2009).

Nolan Gould was born on 28 October 1998 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Modern Family (2009), The To Do List (2013) and Friends with Benefits (2011).

Kara Hayward was born on November 17, 1998 in Massachusetts. She was discovered at an open call, landing her first movie role in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and received critical acclaim and numerous award nominations for her performance as Suzy Bishop. At this point, she was 12 years old. As of 2021, she resides in California and continues to work as an actor.

For fourteen years, she said that family was the most important thing to her and she set most of her time aside to be a "present" mother to her son. Movies, plays and television were chosen, for the most part, when they occurred in town or on a school break. She took one year to homeschool her son for his seventh grade. But it wasn't always this way. She was raised in New York City and wanted to be an actress from the time she was a child, graduating with acting honors from the High School of Performing Arts. She chose to opt out of studying acting in college and attended a small college in Europe, majoring in art history and literature, knowing that acting would take up a great deal of her life and that her college years would be her only real time to learn about something else. Upon graduation, she returned to New York City but a chance trip to Chicago inspired her to move there and become a part of its budding theatre community. It was in a production of "Curse of The Starving Class", directed by Robert Falls and co-starring John Malkovich, that she was first seen by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and, subsequently, asked to join their troupe. She did and learned what it really was to be an actress on her feet, performing in all kinds of roles in both comedy and drama. During this time, she won four Joseph Jefferson awards for best supporting actress.

With a return move to New York, she received a Theatre World Award for "best newcomer" for her role in "the Philanthropist" at the Manhattan Theatre Club and appeared in "Extremities" with Susan Sarandon. This was followed by her appearance in the very successful Steppenwolf production in New York of "Balm in Gilead". She then starred on Broadway opposite Kevin Kline and Raul Julia in "Arms & the Man", directed by John Malkovich, her husband at the time. She was cast in several smaller films including Nadine (1987), Making Mr. Right (1987) and Paperhouse (1988) as well as Lonesome Dove (1989) for television for which she received her first of two Emmy nominations for best supporting actress. But her breakout film performance was in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), in which she played the cunning "victim", who gets the best of con artists Michael Caine and Steve Martin. This led to her being cast in the blockbuster comic strip parody, Dick Tracy (1990), in which she portrayed the girlfriend, "Tess Trueheart", to Warren Beatty's lead.

She went on to appear in the films Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) opposite Richard Dreyfuss, Mortal Thoughts (1991) opposite Demi Moore, 2 Days in the Valley (1996), What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), Breakfast of Champions (1999), Around the Bend (2004) and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004).

On television, she had a recurring part on ER (1994) and Monk (2002) and was in the short-lived sit-com Encore! Encore! (1998) with Nathan Lane and Joan Plowright. She was in the live theatrical presentation of "On Golden Pond" as the troubled daughter of Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews and also appeared in the telefilms Women vs. Men (2002), My Own Country (1998) and Pronto (1997), among others. She received her second Emmy nomination for best supporting actress for Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), directed by Anjelica Huston.

Some of her later appearances were in the films The Amateurs (2005) (aka "The Amateurs"), The Namesake (2006), Comeback Season (2006), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008) and The Joneses (2009).

Kym Jackson was born in Bath, England, UK. Kym is an actor and producer, known for The Secrets She Keeps (2020), We Bury the Dead (2024) and Wish Man (2019). Kym is married to Andrew Steel.

Myles Jeffrey was born on 5 October 1990 in Riverside County, California, USA. He is an actor and assistant director, known for Early Edition (1996), Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire (2000) and Face/Off (1997).

Regan Mizrahi got his start acting while he was still in diapers. He is the son of an actress and a doctor/triathlete. Regan is one of three children in show business and the great grandson of radio star Nathan Hale.

Winner of the 2011 Young Artists Award for Best Actor in a voiceover role; for his portrayal of Boots on the hit preschool show "Dora the Explorer"; Regan loves to be in the recording booth.

Regan has done dozens of national voiceover and television commercials, and has voiced hundreds of toys, DS and Wii games, and even iPhone applications. He has even voiced a roller-coaster and 3d ride. He is well known as the kid CEO of the Haribo gummy bear commercials (side benefit ... delicious props). He has guest starred on TV in shows like "Rescue Me", "White Collar", "MTVs Human Giant" and "Blue Bloods". Regan has appeared in films including "White Irish Drinkers", "Play" and "Nature Calls", where Regan has a lead opposite Maura Tierney, Johnny Knoxville and Patton Oswalt. He has honed his comedy skills working a handful of times on Saturday Night Live.

Regan has a true passion for community and years ago founded the Young performers against Bullying initiative which uses social media to raise awareness and funds to combat bullying in the public schools. He has brought funds to his community to bring in more effective school programs to connect with kids to help solve the problem.

Inspired by singing and harmonizing in the booth, at an early age he began studying classical piano. By age 10 he had a new (and present) love of jazz and playing alto sax. He is presently in a wind symphony, jazz ensemble, marching band, and has sat in the pit for a show or two. Regan is a recipient of the 2018 John Phillip Sousa award.

Regan loves everything to do with science and math, is a proud member of MENSA and is a staff writer for young Mensa's Y2m magazine. Regan is very interested in the brain, especially how it is effected by music and is volunteering in a hospital lab and shadowing some surgeons. The future has endless potential . For sure there will be science , math, music and the arts.

Michael Muhney was born on 12 June 1975 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Veronica Mars (2004), The Young and the Restless (1973) and Sidepiece (2019). He has been married to Jaime Garrison since 11 February 2000. They have three children.

Not only is Ellen an actress but she is a Mensa member and a student at the Lee Strasberg School; she also drives and races a 6-speed SS and collects Burmese cats. Her awards include Best Actress at the AFI for The Young Girl and the Monsoon (1999) and Best Supporting Actress at the Japanese Film Festival for Dolores Claiborne (1995).

Her father, Dr. Erich Muth, was national optician of the year, has an entire museum named after him, and has written several books on optics, the profits from which he donates to The Erich Muth Scholarship; he donated a section of the Smithsonian.

Her mother, Rachel Muth, helped make it possible for Ellen to be an actress by taking her to all her auditions until she was 18.

Joyce Carol Oates was born on 16 June 1938 in Lockport, New York, USA. She is a writer and actress, known for Blonde (2022), Vengeance: A Love Story (2017) and Double Lover (2017). She was previously married to Charles Gross and Raymond Smith.

Alan Rachins was born on 3 October 1942 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Showgirls (1995), L.A. Law (1986) and Dharma & Greg (1997). He was married to Joanna Frank. He died on 2 November 2024 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Ashley Nicole Rickards is an American actress. She graduated from high school, at age 15, and is currently a member of MENSA. She has been in various films and television shows, portraying a wide variety of characters, most notably Fly Away (2011), in which she portrayed "Mandy", a severely autistic girl. She is also the lead character, "Jenna Hamilton", in MTV's Awkward. (2011). A former competitive equestrian, Ashley is also on the board of directors for "Project Futures Somaly Mam Foundation", which works to prevent and end human trafficking and sexual slavery in south east Asia and, soon, worldwide. Ashley writes poetry, scripts, and short stories in her spare time.

Growing up, he moved every 2 years or so (including 5 years in Australia 1967-1972). A year after graduating high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. A back injury ended his career after only 6 years.

After a hiatus of nearly 21 years, he answered his nation's call again and enlisted in the National Guard - taking training as a combat medic. He served a tour in Iraq in 2009-2010.

He caught the acting "bug" while attending W.R. Farrington High School in Honolulu.

He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Laura Shields was born on 19 September 1983 in Oldham, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Fate (2016), The Missing Link (2018) and Bad Dad (2007).