# Why ARE so many high-level scientists Jewish? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 25, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973 "2004-09-25T00:18:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2011, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/61 "2011-04-06T20:56:10Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > India? are you suspecting India of having a lot of academic achievement? or of having lots of groundbreaking scientists? ---
**Author:** ![b87lar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8dc957/32.png) [@b87lar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/b87lar)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/62 "2011-07-20T13:19:28Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > Found this on a site, they are pretty impressive: > “At least 181 Jews and people of half- or three-quarters-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2010, and constituting 36% of all US recipients2 during the same period.In the research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Physics, and Physiology/Medicine, the corresponding world and US percentages are 26% and 39%, respectively. Among women laureates in the four research fields, the Jewish percentages (world and US) are 38% and 50%, respectively. Of organizations awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 25% were founded principally by Jews or by people of half-Jewish descent. (Jews currently make up approximately 0.2% of the world’s population and 2% of the US population.)” This is as flawed a comparison as comparing the 22% of laureates with 0% among the local cannibal tribe of mubumbas somewhere in an Ethiopian desert. If you really need to haggle with statistics you need to compare this percentage to a base of valid cohorts, for example, to the percentage of Jews with high level of research training and position in, say, Physics. That is the base of people who have some access to the “chances” of ever receiving a Nobel in Physics. And the Jewish proportion there could easily be more than 22% - so what anyway. This thread is just plain waste of time trying to explain statistics post mortem. If you really think you have a theory I challenge you to make predictions with it. I bet you in 100 years you all be explaining why Chinese dominate all fields. (My theory here is based on the Law of large numbers. ) ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/63 "2011-07-20T14:24:25Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > I never understood why American Jews “sucked” at sports. Not much into sports history, are we? Jews were “overrepresented” among the [top professional boxers](http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2083369/top_5_jewish_boxers_of_all_time.html?cat=49) in the early part of the 20th century. And they used to dominate [professional basketball](http://www.aish.com/ci/a/48931287.html) as well, for obvious reasons. _“The reason, I suspect, that basketball appeals to the Hebrew with his Oriental background,” wrote Paul Gallico, sports editor of the New York Daily News in the 1930s, “is that the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness.”_ 😃 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/64 "2011-07-20T14:44:54Z")
> [@b87lar](#): > > I bet you in 100 years you all be explaining why Chinese dominate all fields. (My theory here is based on the Law of large numbers. ) Chinese Jews for the win! ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/65 "2011-07-20T22:09:48Z")
> [@b87lar](#): > > … If you really think you have a theory I challenge you to make predictions with it. … My theory goes back six years ago but still holds. The prediction is that the effect will become significantly less pronounced over the next several generations as the cultural exposure to multiple cultures and a huge variety of ideas is not so uncommon anymore in today’s much more connected world. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/66 "2011-07-20T23:06:04Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > I never understood why American Jews “sucked” at sports. Israeli Jews seem to be a tougher bunch. Hmm. If you compute the expected value of a career in sports (salary times probability of making it to make that salary) you are going to come up with a pretty low number. If you can instead go for a career in the sciences, or law, or medicine, you are going to do much better on average. So I suspect many who could go into sports don’t. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2011, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/67 "2011-07-20T23:53:46Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > And they used to dominate [professional basketball](http://www.aish.com/ci/a/48931287.html) The idea that Jews dominated basketball before blacks is a bit of a myth imo. At most you could say in the 1930s a team of Jewish players won a lot of championships in one of several barely profitable North East bush leagues. But even if we grant that, basketball history was heavily segregated for a very long time. Even the Irish had their own leagues. The first black players didn’t play in the NBA until 1950. Before then, blacks ran their own leagues and amateur circuits. You had all black teams like the New York Rens or the Harlem Globe Trotters doing their own thing out on an island. Once the real competition started there was no question who’s sport it was. And it’s not like Jews were setting the nascent NBA on fire before then, either. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/68 "2011-07-22T00:10:05Z")
> [@L. G. Butts](#): > > Got it in one! Very reasoned and succinct post. > > I think that the world is changing though. As a someone who has spent the last several years in grad school (physics) at an institution with several Nobel prize winners, I think that the percentage of Jewish scientists is shrinking. The circumstances that made Jews traders in intellectual property have disappeared with the creation of Israel and its “adoption” by the US. While the percentage of Jews that go to college and graduate school are still probably much higher than other social/ethnic/economic groups, I believe (IMHO, based on personal experience and from the attitudes of my many Jewish friends) that less stock is placed in education by the current generation than prior ones. I have to say, as someone whose scholarly “mother” is Jewish, that I have noticed this too. For instance, she and her husband are very intellectual and driven as scientists. Both are well-respected in their fields. But their kids, while not exactly destitute, dropped out of college and live less exceptional lives. They are much more like everyone else in the general population. Another older Jewish couple I know (both academics) have Generation Jones-aged children who are fairly successful in their stereotypically “Jewish” fields (doctors/lawyers/etc.), but not quite as impressive as their parents. And _their_ kids are college drop-outs and free spirits with empty pockets. It may be that the insularity of Jewishness is diffusing with each new generation, so that Jews are becoming normalized with the general population. Malcolm Gladwell gives an interesting hypothesis for the truth behind the “good Jewish lawyer” stereotype. Essentially he thinks it was an issue of timing in addition to cultural factors. He also talks about the “Asians are good at math” stereotype. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/69 "2011-07-22T01:40:27Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > Because their mothers are? Isn’t Jewish status is always conferred by Jews on people who have Jewish mothers, but not necessarily on people with Jewish fathers? Physicists Niels Bohr and Hans Bethe had Jewish mothers and Christain fathers. I would be suprised if there were not several other prominent scientists of like parentage. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/70 "2011-07-22T02:52:47Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I have to say, as someone whose scholarly “mother” is Jewish, that I have noticed this too. For instance, she and her husband are very intellectual and driven as scientists. Both are well-respected in their fields. But their kids, while not exactly destitute, dropped out of college and live less exceptional lives. They are much more like everyone else in the general population. > > Another older Jewish couple I know (both academics) have Generation Jones-aged children who are fairly successful in their stereotypically “Jewish” fields (doctors/lawyers/etc.), but not quite as impressive as their parents. And _their_ kids are college drop-outs and free spirits with empty pockets. > > It may be that the insularity of Jewishness is diffusing with each new generation, so that Jews are becoming normalized with the general population. > > Malcolm Gladwell gives an interesting hypothesis for the truth behind the “good Jewish lawyer” stereotype. Essentially he thinks it was an issue of timing in addition to cultural factors. He also talks about the “Asians are good at math” stereotype. On the one hand I obviously agree with the overall prediction, albeit not as much because of diffused insularity but because everyone else is as exposed to the panopoly of ideas as the Jewish culture always had now; now everyone trades in ideas. On the other hand however your particular examples are not great evidence. The average Jew is not a highly respected scientist, or even a doctor or a lawyer. When you meet one the statistics are such that the next generation will have a regression to the mean of the cultural group population as a whole. And that mean is merely middle to upper middle class college educated. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/71 "2011-07-22T02:57:40Z")
I’ve gotten the impression that nearly Jews who are high-level scientists, artists of businessmen are Ashkenazi and not Sephardi. A question asking why so many Jews are high-level scientists might benefit from asking why are so many Jewish high-level scientists Ashkenazi rather than Sephardi. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/72 "2011-07-22T03:58:08Z")
Well, first off, there are many more of 'em, especially in Western culture. Over 80% of American Jews are of Ashkenazi origin. And Western culture has dominated science for the last several centuries. Back when the Arab world was the apex of intellectual thought, Sephardic Jews were heavy in the mix. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/73 "2011-07-22T04:02:09Z")
A lot of Jews wear glasses and have receding hairlines, so they would naturally gravitate toward the field of employment where they fit in. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/74 "2011-07-22T04:12:27Z")
> [@NewHeart\_Male](#): > > Are they just naturally better at handling the abstract world, is it down to a previous establishment of the values of academic discipline (perhaps through religion), or is it something else? > Please discuss. Natural selection + culture: > [@](#): > > Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115. That’s only modestly higher than the overall European average of 100, but the gap is large enough to produce a huge difference in the proportion of geniuses. When a group’s average IQ is 100, the percentage of people above 140 is 0.4%; when the average is 110, the genius rate is 2.3%. > > Though Jews make up less than 3% of the U.S. population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950, account for 20% of this country’s chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students, the pair write… > > Jews first came to Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries, long before they were known for intellectual prowess, Cochran and Harpending say. They worked as traders before taking financial jobs made available by Christians who were forbidden by the Church from charging interest. By 1100, local registries listed most Ashkenazi Jews as lenders. > > That set the stage for natural selection to do its work, Cochran and Harpending theorized. Jews didn’t intermarry, keeping their gene pool closed. They were subjected to periodic persecution, which kept the population from outgrowing its professional niche. > > According to the theory, the smartest individuals made the most money, and the wealthiest families had the most surviving children. The genes of the most intelligent Jews spread most, slowly raising the average IQ of the entire group. > > Over 40 generations – roughly 1,000 years – an increase of just 0.3 points per generation would have added up to a cumulative advantage of 12 points, Cochran and Harpending theorized. Some of their other models projected a benefit of 16 to 20 IQ points. > **[Legacy inscribed on Jews' genes?](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-apr-18-sci-jewish-iq18-story.html)** > > Jewish legacy inscribed on genes? ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/75 "2011-07-22T06:04:28Z")
> [@b87lar](#): > > This is as flawed a comparison as comparing the 22% of laureates with 0% among the local cannibal tribe of mubumbas somewhere in an Ethiopian desert… Don’t be ridiculous. Comparison is being made with numerous other much larger groups which had better educational opportunities until the last 50 years or so. Concentrating for the moment on the US, recall that even as late as Richard Feynman’s generation Jews faced discrimination in admission to the country’s best graduate schools. > [@b87lar](#): > > …I bet you in 100 years you all be explaining why Chinese dominate all fields. (My theory here is based on the Law of large numbers. Oh? How does your Law of large numbers explain the proportionally much fewer US science laureates who have been Catholic, Baptist, Calvinist, Lutheran and Episcopalian? The same goes for Americans of English, Irish, German and Italian ancestry. For that matter there are about half as many Chinese Americans as there are American Jews, but Chinese Americans have produced nowhere near half as many laureates. > [@b87lar](#): > > If you really need to haggle with statistics you need to compare this percentage to a base of valid cohorts, for example, to the percentage of Jews with high level of research training and position in, say, Physics. That is the base of people who have some access to the “chances” of ever receiving a Nobel in Physics. And the Jewish proportion there could easily be more than 22% Given the extreme selectivity practiced in cohort admission, a disproportionate number of cohort Jews could only be more evidence of disproportionate achievement. > [@b87lar](#): > > so what anyway. This thread is just plain waste of time trying to explain statistics post mortem. The question asked in the OP is an intellectual one, interesting to many people. I would think it must be of some interest you since you stuck your nose into it. > [@b87lar](#): > > If you really think you have a theory I challenge you to make predictions with it. Challenge away, but the numbers are unambiguous. The problem is that we do not have any idea if the explanation lies with culture, genetics, or both. Literally no idea. Whatever the explanation is, it is still at work, and at full throttle with 18 Jewish laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine 2001-2009: [Jewish Nobel Laureates](http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html) I do not think I would be going too far out on a limb to predict that Jews will continue to produce more scientific laureates than any other ethnic group for at least another 100 years. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/76 "2011-07-22T15:10:35Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Well, first off, there are many more of 'em, especially in Western culture. Over 80% of American Jews are of Ashkenazi origin. And Western culture has dominated science for the last several centuries. > > Back when the Arab world was the apex of intellectual thought, Sephardic Jews were heavy in the mix. How many more of them? What’s the proportion and is it reflected in the number of Nobels? The factors you outlined in 2004 still apply to Sephardim. Are 20% of American Jewish Nobels sephardic? Also, note that even in Israel, every single Prime Minister since Ben Gurion has been Ashkenazi. How come? Aside from Maimonides, who was there? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/77 "2011-07-22T15:14:40Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Also, note that even in Israel, every single Prime Minister since Ben Gurion has been Ashkenazi. How come? They look better in tights. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/78 "2011-07-22T17:27:46Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > How many more of them? What’s the proportion and is it reflected in the number of Nobels? The factors you outlined in 2004 still apply to Sephardim. > > Are 20% of American Jewish Nobels sephardic? > > Also, note that even in Israel, every single Prime Minister since Ben Gurion has been Ashkenazi. How come? > > Aside from Maimonides, who was there? How many more? Well checking my facts I overestimated. It’s more like 10% of American Jews and another 10% that is of mixed heritage (Black, Native American, Asian, etc.). Worldwide it is more like 15%. So something like eight to nine times more. Before Rambam there was [Hasadi Ibn Shaprut](http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112514/jewish/Hasdai-Ibn-Shaprut.htm) for one: > [@](#): > > the young Hasdai studied the Talmud, and later also the Hebrew, Arabic and Latin languages, in which he became very proficient. Hasdai displayed a special interest in medicine and became a famous physician. > > Hasdai’s great scholarship, and especially his fame as a physician, attracted the attention of Caliph Abarrahman III, in Cordova. The Caliph appointed Hasdai his court physician. … under Hasdai’s influence and with his support, Hebrew poetry and scholarship began to flourish in Spain, marking the beginning of the Golden Era, which produced such outstanding philosophers and poets as Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Nachmanides, and others. [Saadiah ben Joseph](http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=4&letter=S) for another. (Honestly, how many of those who were the great scientists of the Arab Golden Age who were _Muslim_ can you name?) [Spinoza](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza) was of Sephardic descent, albeit raised in the Netherlands. And [this list](http://www.lastar.org/?page_id=70) of accomplished Sephardim includes four Nobel Prize winners, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, a father of Classical Economics, and even a President of Israel. Not bad for a group that represents just 0.03% of the world’s population and which was for that several hundred years primarily located in North African and Arab lands with poor educational opportunities, and, for the last several hundreds of years not as much a part of that trader of ideas culture due to isolation from the rest of the world of ideas. Almost half a percent of all of the 813 individuals who have won the Nobel Prize. That’s still about a 15 fold overrepresentation. Not as much of an overrepresentation as the Ashkenazi population to be sure, but still significant. Why have there been so few Sephardim at the top levels of Israeli politics? (Besides the fact that they look so bad in tights.) Certainly a factor may be the fact that culturally the Israeli Sephardim are much more likely to be ultra-Orthodox and much less likely to be secular, and while the ultra-Orthodox often control the balance of power they are themselves a minority. Israel was created and is still dominated by Jews whose recent generational heritage was of the West. The Jews who had been in Palestine forever, and those who came after expulsion from Arab lands around the time of Israel’s creation, were lower educated and not a majority. And they do perhaps have some validity to complaints about discrimination against them by the wealthier and better educated Jews of European origin. ---
**Author:** ![b87lar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8dc957/32.png) [@b87lar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/b87lar)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/79 "2011-07-23T17:02:50Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > Don’t be ridiculous. Comparison is being made with numerous other > much larger groups which had better educational opportunities until > the last 50 years or so. Concentrating for the moment on the US, recall > that even as late as Richard Feynman’s generation Jews faced discrimination > in admission to the country’s best graduate schools. Comparison was made with general population. But it has been mentioned several times in this thread that there are typical Jewish professions: doctors, lawyers, and the field of science. So the correct comparison would be: jewish population proportion in the field of Physics vs. proportion of NP laureates for Physics. That I can buy. No baloney abut 22% versus 0.2% world population, please (there are some non-Jewish readers with intellect, too) > [@colonial](#): > > Oh? How does your Law of large numbers explain the proportionally much > fewer US science laureates who have been Catholic, Baptist, Calvinist, > Lutheran and Episcopalian? The same goes for Americans of English, Irish, > German and Italian ancestry. For that matter there are about half as many > Chinese Americans as there are American Jews, but Chinese Americans > have produced nowhere near half as many laureates. Cool, let’s let it shake a little longer and we’ll see! I am talking population sizes of Billions that will be rapidly gaining access to all fields of modern endeavors. > [@colonial](#): > > Given the extreme selectivity practiced in cohort admission, a disproportionate > number of cohort Jews could only be more evidence of disproportionate achievement. Very debatable. But for the sake of argument - be it: let us normalize from this point and compare the general Jewish proportion in the field of Physics with the Nobel proportion? Do you have such numbers? Don’t take me wrong I am not arguing Jews are not smart; I am only irritated by statistics being out next to each other to make all kinds of flawed comparisons. For example, here in NY suburbs, every second doctor is Jewish (my perception, maybe every third, whatever). Now there will be some proportion of “Best in NY” doctors (a NYT magazine award), say 33%. If I drew the same comparison as the poster I responded to, I would have stated: “There are 33% Jewish Best in NY Doctors; Jews represent only 2% of population.” I hope you see my point. I’d be genuinely interested to see a valid comparison for the field of physics. > [@colonial](#): > > The question asked in the OP is an intellectual one, interesting to many people. > I would think it must be of some interest you since you stuck your nose into it. I am nose deep in it, and yes. Discussing statistics that are pulled out of someone’s nose without much context tends to be highly wasteful, that’s all IMHO. Like you said yourself “The problem is that we do not have any idea” …and we won’t, really. And by the time we will, things will look differently again. > [@colonial](#): > > [Jewish Nobel Laureates](http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html) > > I do not think I would be going too far out on a limb to predict that Jews will continue > to produce more scientific laureates than any other ethnic group for at least another 100 years. Bravo and respect! Nothing to argue with. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973/80 "2011-07-23T23:13:58Z")
> [@b87lar](#): > > Comparison was made with general population. But it has been mentioned several times in this thread that there are typical Jewish professions: doctors, lawyers, and the field of science. So the correct comparison would be: jewish population proportion in the field of Physics vs. proportion of NP laureates for Physics. That I can buy. No baloney abut 22% versus 0.2% world population, please (there are some non-Jewish readers with intellect, too) … Okay, let’s play this one out. 40% of the American Nobel Prize winners in Medicine have been Jewish; 55% of the American Economics Nobel Prize winners have been. 40% of American doctors Jewish? [Not quite.](http://www.jewishjournal.com/health/article/is_there_a_docta_in_the_house_20030905/) > [@](#): > > … at the tail end of the 20th century there were between 80,000 and 100,000 Jewish physicians in the United States, comprising between 12 percent and 15 percent of the nation’s 684,414 medical doctors. Jews make up 2 percent of the total U.S. population. If Jewish doctors seemed more ubiquitous than these statistics imply, it is because they are clustered in major urban environments, especially in California and the Northeast. … Are 55% of American economists Jewish? I doubt it. Jews are overrepresented in those areas but not by that much. More so … what if it _was_? It would merely make the question into “why are Jews so overrepresented as doctors and economists?” And physicists, and writers of literature, and chemists, and people who would be the pool for the Peace Prize …? Again I favor a cultural explanation, and believe that to a large degree those factors, in particular exposure to a wide variety of ideas from different cultures and the need to trade in those ideas, are wide spread now, no longer so much more common among Jews than among other peoples. But I also factor in a cultural tendency to argue. And this, I understand, is still in contrast with Chinese culture … for now. At least according to one radio interview with a Chinese scientist who had been in America for many years and who had returned to China, who bemoaned that he catches even himself asking his kids if they listened well to the teacher today, and went on to explain that Chinese educational culture is about listening to the teacher, not questioning what the teacher says. Jewish culture is all about arguing. The Bible stories we fixate on are the ones in which our Patriarchs and Matriarchs argued with God and sometimes even won. The name “Israel” literally [means the one who wrestles with God](http://www.mishpacha.org/wrestling.shtml) and it is a key feature of Jewish identity to this day. Jewish identity is not about _accepting_ any truth but about wrestling with it. China will not produce the top level scientists that its numbers would predict it should until culturally an attitude that open questioning and doubt is a good thing emerges victorious over the fear that questioning and doubt may undermine the governments authority. And they aint there yet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-so-many-high-level-scientists-jewish/265973.md?page=5)