Abstract Background Intelligence is related to both height and body mass index (BMI) at various stages of life. Several studies have demonstrated longitudinal relationships between these measures, but none has established whether height and intelligence, or BMI and intelligence are linked from childhood through to older age. Methods We assessed the relations between these measures over an interval of up to 67 years using data from the 36-Day Sample, an initially-representative sample of Scottish people born in 1936, assessed at age 11 years (N = 6,291) and again at 77–78 years (N = 722). This paper focuses on the 423 participants (6.7 % of the original sample) who provided relevant data in late adulthood. Results Height and intelligence were significantly positively associated in childhood (β = .23) and late adulthood (β = .21–.29). Longitudinal correlations also showed that childhood intelligence predicted late-adulthood height (β = .20), and childhood height predicted late-adulthood cognitive ability (β = ....