Science and Jews

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=175 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="03cd4c00dduajq.gif"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Culture and Science"><U>Culture & Science</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/04-4.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.friends-partners.org/partners"><U><IMG SRC="0758c530.gif" border=0 width="140" height="83" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Map of expulsion of Jews from WEurope"><U><IMG SRC="0638c710.gif" border=0 width="140" height="113" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/expuls.HTM" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gall"><U><IMG SRC="06a8c680.gif" border=0 width="140" height="104" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id39.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Return to Western Europe"><U><IMG SRC="0928c5c0.gif" border=0 width="140" height="92" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id38.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Migration to Western Europe"><U><IMG SRC="08d8c8d0.gif" border=0 width="140" height="141" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id35.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Civil Rights"><U><IMG SRC="0718c870.gif" border=0 width="140" height="135" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/29-9.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.friends-partners.org/partners"><U><IMG SRC="06c8c8b0.gif" border=0 width="140" height="139" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Map of Jewish Emigration from Russia"><U><IMG SRC="06e8c580.gif" border=0 width="140" height="88" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dreyfus"><U><IMG SRC="0848c7c0.gif" border=0 width="140" height="124" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/Holocaust/gallery/jewpop.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/Holocaust/gall"><U><IMG SRC="0738c7c0.gif" border=0 width="140" height="124" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://physicsweb.org/box/world/14/11/7/pw1411072" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://physicsweb.org/box/world/14/11/7/"><U><IMG SRC="0688c5a0.gif" border=0 width="140" height="90" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Mental (Building) Blocks</B><FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#333399" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#333399" FACE="Arial" >  |      </FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#333399" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mental Blocks"><U><B>home</B></U></A></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Science and Hungary"><U>Science and Hungary</U></A>   |   <B>Science and Jews</B>   |   <A HREF="id6.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Science and National Peculiarities"><U>Science and National Peculiarities</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>Science and Jews</B></div> <bR> <div> Copyright: © 2001, 2002 Emile van Kreveld (kreveld@wxs.nl), all rights reserved. Unaltered copies of this computer text file may be freely distributed for personal and classroom use. Alterations to this file are permitted only for purposes of computer printouts, although altered computer text files may not circulate. Except to cover nominal distribution costs, this file cannot be sold without written permission from the copyright holder. This copyright notice supersedes all previous notices on earlier versions of this text file. When quoting from this text, please use the following citation: "Jews as preferred suppliers in the physical sciences?" , M.E. van Kreveld (Internet Release, 2002). </div> <div> This is a working draft. I would be grateful if you will report errors to Emile van Kreveld: <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#3300FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="mailto:kreveld@wxs.nl " TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:kreveld@wxs.nl "><U>kreveld@wxs.nl.</U></A></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <B>Jews as preferred suppliers in the physical sciences? </B></div> <div> (© M.E. van Kreveld) Amsterdam, version 24-12-2002</div> <bR> <div> <B>Summary</B></div> <div> It has been noticed before more than once that the percentage of Jews working in the sciences exceeds their demographic percentage considerably. The observation is easily made, however it is much more difficult to devise a theory describing this phenomenon. Any sociologic process moves from an initial to a final state. Off course such a change cannot be explained by merely considering the characteristics of one particular subgroup. Here we discuss the change between the end of the 19th and the end of the 20th century. During this century science expanded considerably and created many new employment opportunities. Demographic shifts, the geographical redistribution of scientific power, labour-market pull and cultural push all contributed to the filling of these “open niches”. These factors could produce no effect, such as the admission to higher education, before civil rights were granted, accompanied by economic improvement. The similarity with the emancipation process of the Chinese outside of China is remarkable. All this circumstantial evidence points into the direction of the emancipation of a minority, that capitalizes its cultural assets very effectively under social-economic and political change.</div> <div>  </div> <div> <B>Introduction</B></div> <div> In the<B> </B><A HREF="id40.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NTvN"><U><B>NTvN</B></U></A>[1] jan 2002 F.A. Muller posed implicitly two simple questions: “Why does the percentage of Jews in physics outweigh by far their demographic percentage and why is their rate of success so much higher than that from people with other backgrounds?” These questions are not new as easily can be concluded from the frequency of their reappearance. As simple as these questions are, so complicated is the (of course, partial!) answer.</div> <bR> <div> Any phenomenon in society is the resultant of many interacting factors. Although one observed correlation could possibly hint in the direction of a causal relation, it seldom leads to a straightforward explanation of a social phenomenon, let alone a direct linear relationship between one cause and one effect. One can derive a final state only from the initial state, similar as in thermodynamics, when the system, together with its boundaries, is very well described, its components are known, and the trajectory is unambiguously defined. This ideal cannot be achieved in sociology.  At best one can dream up a collection of consistent hypotheses that are supported by a few observables. To any physicist it will be self-evident that the transition to the final state cannot be explained merely by the properties of only one of the components of the initial state. Therefore it will be self-evident that an attempt to explain the abovementioned phenomena by merely focusing one’s attention on one or two characteristic features of Jews must fail. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Basics of culture </B></div> <div> The chances are that all notions like culture, prejudice, paradigm and worldview are equivalent in the conceptual operation practice: they are just collections of concepts and models, that both enable and curtail our mental actions and imagination. They range from strictly individual concepts till memes[2], which are shared with our family, friends, colleagues, co-religionists or compatriots. Looking into a man’s collection of concepts we can, after categorizing, identify (when we are sufficiently clever) some of them (or their subcategories) as his paradigms and/or his worldview. The basic collection of shared concepts in a society that shape and set boundary conditions to all views and actions of its citizenry can be considered as its culture. Culture is the greatest common concept divisor (or more precise: intersection) of a group’s total meme collection. This holds also true for any sub-group with its own related sub-culture, e.g. a company, a group of experts, an army, criminals, a university, science, a guild, trade circles, a horse-fair, to name a few. When a group is sufficiently small as well as their meme collection, the buzz-word “paradigm” is frequently substituted for “sub-culture” in common parlance at certain levels of society.     </div> <bR> <div> Any individual can only think with the mental building blocks that he/she has in stock. Nobody is able to build a thought with relevant components that are not present in his/her mind. Paradigms can be effective in two diametrically oriented directions: asset or constraint. On the one hand they serve as the point of departure for developing new insights, and on the other they screen from unsolicited intimacies. The former application can be considered as capital for revision or extension of an already existing view after judgment, the latter as prejudice. The main strategy of each brain storming session, no matter which guru leads the session, consists of removing the constraints and exploiting the mental capital of the prevailing paradigms as much as possible. </div> <bR> <div> Culture, taken as the pervasive collection of common concepts employed in our social habits and attitudes mixed with prevailing religious norms and values, is one of the principal suppliers of separate concepts, paradigms and worldviews. Those are the concepts and models that we have sucked in since the delivery with our mother’s milk, and have subsequently supplemented and extended over the years towards a personal view when we became street-wise.</div> <bR> <div> Schein’s definition[3] of culture appeals to me, because it has nothing to do with stilted ideals, but is just voiced operationally as “that is the way we do things here”. Schein elaborates in his book merely on organizational culture, but I think it can just as well applied to any culture. Although cultural features are constituents of regional, tribal, national or religious communities, still the transfer process proper takes place in personal contacts with parents, relatives, friends and teachers.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Science unequally distributed over a population</B></div> <div> Scientific participation is not equally distributed over the various groups of a population. The great abundance of Jewish physicists and mathematicians is a remarkable phenomenon. It is also a rather modern phenomenon[4]. When the new science took off after Galilei and Newton Jews did not substantially contribute to its development. The first intellectual profession where they obtained a firm footing was medicine, which derived from the Universities of Padua[5] and Leiden[6] that were the first who accepted Jewish students in medicine. However the first important centers for natural sciences came into being in Germany, France and England, where in the beginning Jews were not admitted to the universities. So for a long time science as a profession was not within reach by social exclusion. On the other hand it is known that the Jewish intellectuals were very much interested and were very well aware of the actual achievements in the natural sciences, which can be concluded from the extensive literature that was generated about the adaptations that the new scientific discoveries would require from the interpretation of the Holy Books[7]. In the mean time the relation between Jews and science has been drastically changed because at present we see that during the last half-century nearly one-third of the Nobel laureates in physics have been Jews.[8] Among the seventeen twentieth-century physicists that are portrayed by Pais[9] in his book “The genius of science” we see 10.5 Jews (counting Niels Bohr biologically as 0.5 because of his non-Jewish father). The observation of this effect is much easier than discovering the driving forces that can be pointed out as the reasons why. There are several candidate hypotheses: heredity, culture and social circumstances. Even if we acknowledge that heredity can play a role in the transfer of intellectual capabilities, then still these capabilities cannot turn to good account if they are not supplemented by concepts that must be absorbed from the environment. Even a highly intelligent, but empty mind cannot produce anything useful, let alone anything scientific. The filling of the mind with relevant concepts always requires a lot of learning effort from the person in question. This natural law holds even good in the IQ-development business: no achievement without hard labor. From the introduction of a book[10], dealing with the issue whether a Jewish cultural background can explain the attraction to and the success in the area of science, in particular in physics and mathematics, we read: “But we believe that science and Jewish religious tradition share this: the conviction that this world is very much real and tangible, that the world and the actions of human beings matter, and that there is order to be found.” Indeed, this shows a striking similarity with the (practically always implicit) metaphysical[11] assumptions that physicists make and that cannot be derived from other basic factors. According to Bunge[12] those 3 assumptions are: 1. An outside world exists, 2. That has structure, 3. That is knowable. How surprising this resemblance may be, it is a correlation, not an explanation. Christianity inherited the same three convictions from Judaism, together with the idea that the world has a beginning and an end. That’s why both are denoted as linear religions. Maybe it can rather well explain why the Atlantic world served as a fertile soil for a technological science-based society, but it cannot explain why Jews did not contribute to the genesis of modern science and were later on so successful in this area. Although these abovementioned three assumptions shape our thinking environment, they act as boundary conditions, but they do not represent driving forces for scientific production. And although there is no denying that Jews were very successful in science, taking the percentage of academic staff[13] and Nobel prices as a yard-stick, at the same time the percentage of Jewish intellectuals involved in the physical sciences is rather modest compared to the percentage dedicated to all other academic branches like law, economics, education, humanities, life sciences, medicine, pharmacy and engineering. The abovementioned suggestion that all qualified Jews are so attracted by physical sciences that they try to force their way through the front door of the physics department is plainly wrong.[14]</div> <bR> <div> <B>Religion a source of science?</B></div> <div> According to Rigden Orthodox Judaism is both culture as well as religion[15]. Let’s draw near to Schein’s description of culture: “that’s the way we do things here”. </div> <bR> <div> And with regard to this cultural “behavior” we perceive an enormous difference between Judaism and (Roman) Catholicism, for a rather extended period identical with Christianity. Illustrated by Flato: “How in fact can we not relate the existence of a culture of the Book, which has for centuries been inculcated in all Jewish children, and in such a way as to develop critical reasoning and inquiry, to their attraction to anything intellectual and anything written? One may say that other religions of the Book exist, too. Undoubtedly, but the contrast is very sharp between this tradition and, for example, that of the Catholic Church, which has for a long time – a very long time – fought science and always suspected it, more or less openly, of representing a threat to the faith. Jewish tradition, for its part, never placed itself in conflict with the great scholars. It has never experienced a Galileo affair[16]; and most rabbis have always very cleverly accommodated themselves to the discoveries of science[17], by unhesitatingly revising their symbolist readings and interpretations of the sacred texts. Furthermore, in sharp contrast to other religious traditions, and even in total opposition to the Islamic tradition (which does not tolerate the slightest interpretation of the written text, Judaism has always fostered and even broadened not only study of the Scriptures, but also commentary, not to mention the development of treasures of the imagination in the search (in the finest Talmudic tradition) for the best ways of taking liberties with the laws of the Lord.” In the same vein Baruch Blumberg (Nobel prize physiology 1976) overtly ascribed[18] his scientific success to his elementary education at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, a Hebrew parochial school in Brooklyn, where at an early age, in addition to a rigorous secular education, he learned the Hebrew Testament in the original language[19][20]. “We spent many hours on the rabbinic commentaries on the Bible and were immersed in the existential reasoning of the Talmud at an age when we could hardly have realized its impact.”[21] Such a culture can sometimes find an echo among people where one would never expect it: “Yes, yes. Sure. That's exactly right. This whole concept, the whole business of mentoring. In the New York City Police Department they refer to a mentor as a "rabbi," even though they're almost all Irish.”[22]</div> <bR> <div> <B>Rabi’s view as a boy</B></div> <div> To throw some light on the meaning of “Taking liberties with the laws of the Lord” I like to tell how Isidor Rabi managed to make a unique deal with the Jewish community and his parents about his “bar mitzwah”. As any thirteen-year-old Jewish boy Isidor was expected to celebrate his arrival at the age of responsibility with such a traditional ceremony in a synagogue. On a Sabbath shortly after his birthday the boy is called either to “lain” himself a passage from the Mosaic writings or only witness it (that means stand as an assistant next to the reader) and subsequently to deliver a talk based on the Torah. But Isidor, after discovering and reading astronomy books from the Carnegie Library, was already at this age questioning the existence of God and abandoning the religious practices and rituals. After some wheeling and dealing a compromise was reached on Isidor’s own terms about a bar mitzwah at his home before a committee of wise old men. Rabi: “They had a party at my bar mitzwah, and they brought in some people. They prevailed on me to make speech, so I made a speech [in Yiddish]. My speech was “How the Electric Light Works”, which I described in great detail. I talked about the carbon filament, and then there was something I thought was very clever: getting the [electrical] lead out from the filament[23].” Presumably the sole event in Jewish history where science was considered as a sufficient condition of entry to the religious community. Here we witness a piece of religious elastic drawn out till maximum length. To a certain extent Isidore’s mother unconsciously made him that way. There is a memorable anecdote[24] from Isidor Rabi, who “when asked whether his attendance at a religious school in pre-war Poland had influenced his later scientific development, he answered in the affirmative. But he also pointed out that the most important influence came from his mother (See paragraph on the Jewish mother further down). When the 10-year-old Isidor came home for lunch, she did not ask whether he did well at school, like most other mothers. She wanted to know whether the boy had asked a good question”. Questioning is basic in Jewish tradition. “In which respect differs this evening from any other evening?” The opening address of every Pesach, to be recited by the youngest male attendant.   </div> <bR> <div> The Rabi story can serve as an illustration of some characteristic cultural features of a Jewish community:  first, erudition and reasoning is much respected and second, rules can always be reconsidered and negotiated. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Emancipation, social climbing</B></div> <div> Along with the abovementioned cultural features a totally different factor, induced by the social environment, could be at work. On behalf of social emancipation the notions “technology push” and “market pull” can easily be translated in “culture push” and “labour-market pull”. According to Flato[25]: “To which one must finally no doubt add the “minority spirit” and the quota system which have pushed many Jews in the Diaspora into the most advanced studies, in which they have proven their excellence in an effort to achieve social protection and upward mobility.” I’m under the impression that the urge for emancipation is largely generated psychologically by the circumstance of “conditional acceptance”. If Flato’s minority spirit is equivalent with this urge I can agree with him. However emancipation is an evolutionary process and can be seen as making the most of an opportunity to fill an open niche. And also Jews choose the most convenient upward mobility route as anybody else does. Therefore they see an open niche as an opportunity and a quota system as a limitation of their opportunities, the reverse of a driving force. Remember, as mentioned a few paragraphs ago, that compared to other studies the percentage of Jewish students (the same holds for students of all other backgrounds) that choose physical sciences is rather small (between 10% and 15%, including mathematics).      </div> <bR> <div> <B>Jewish history in a micro-nutshell, viewed through physically-coloured specs </B></div> <div> To understand the geographical diversity of the emancipation processes one has to study the widely diverging turbulent socio-economic histories of Jewish communities in the various European countries. The processes of emergence, prospering, decline, disappearance, conflicts and migration of those communities show such close similarities that they easily can be recognized as recurrent patterns. Tolerated for their economic importance but despised. Their entrepreneurship (probably also a cultural characteristic) stimulated regional economic growth and they themselves prospered accordingly, accumulating a growing percentage of the GNP in their hands. Consequently envy increased, and often so intensely that it exploded in robbing, looting, lynching, confiscating their property, confining them in ghetto’s, expulsion or extermination. Everybody’s bread and butter is always the bottom line. Spain, where Jews witnessed their flowering-time around the 10th century, went even so far as to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs[26]. Although the effects became not perceptible until long after the killing. Before that so much golden eggs (and above all: silver ones!) were drawn from their colonies on the new continent that Spain first became one of the most powerful nations of this epoch (called their Golden Age) before it went down the drain. Even the French constitution based on “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” that made overt discrimination shameful, did not prevent that anti-Semitism was continuously slumbering in the background, as the Dreyfus affair proved. The abscess has burst open although discrimination was officially non-existent in France. France is with regard to anti-Semitism a mixed bag, at least in science, because in that domain several cases of negative as well as positive discrimination are known[27]. Anyhow in spite of a covert discouraging policy the prestigious Académie des Sciences in Paris accommodated in the 4 decades before 1870 around 2% Jews, then for 3 decades 10% and after 1900 continued for 3 decades at a rate of 6%, well above their percentage in the total population. I think that it will be difficult to explain these changes that reflect the resultant of several interacting forces in society. Around those years the center of science shifted to Germany. Therefore the situation in that country had much more significance for the social processes within science.</div> <bR> <div> We consider Germany, Hungary, Russia and the U.S. as the most important countries with regard to the development of modern science, however for widely diverging reasons. All over Western Europe the Jews were since the Middle Ages, in particular after the First Crusade, neither allowed to own any land, nor were they accepted as members of a guild, let alone as students at universities (except in a few medical faculties as is mentioned above). They were everywhere regarded as foreigners, as people belonging to the “Jewish Nation”, excluded from the normal rights of citizenship. After they came near to being totally expelled from Western Europe in 1500, their migration reversed around 1650. The following centuries show a flow from East to West[28]. This migration got going by the massacres perpetrated by the Cossacks, the invasion by the Swedes, the Thirty Years War and the economic misery that attended these catastrophies. At the same time the Western economy awoke to fresh activity. The induced migration manifested a pronounced stratification: scholars and rabbi, rich arms dealers, craftsman, merchants and pedlars and down below the displaced persons. True enough the arms dealers developed into the rich and influentual “Court Jews” (maybe 1-2%), but at least 75% of the total were reduced to poverty. When those small-scale retailers were fortunate enough they managed to achieve the status of “Schutzjuden”, with a residence permit in a small town. The 10 % underclass, dragging on a painful existence below subsistance level, became known as “Betteljuden”, totally dependent on the charity of their co-religionists. In Germany these different groups amounted together to about 200.000 people around 1800. At the end of the 18th century the first Jewish students were admitted to the University of Halle to study medicine (but ….. had to travel to either Padua or Leiden to complete their degree!)[29]. Related to the urbanization in the 19th century the circumstances improved so drastically for the Jews that around 1870 60% belonged to the middle and upper-middle class and 25% to the lower middle class, whereas the number of deprived was greatly reduced. This economic improvement created the possibilities to send their children to quality schools. “In a social and cultural sense, it was this unquenchable desire for secular education that characterized German-speaking Jews, and paved the way for their entrance into the educated middle classes and their overrepresentation in the liberal professions. After the Gymnasien they struggled their way into universities.”[30] Medicine and law were traditional but obvious choices because industry was outright anti-Jewish, which provided the Universities with a thin excuse for refusing admittance to Jews in many established areas: “Why let them in if they cannot find jobs after graduation?” </div> <bR> <div> Generally we see in the European countries over the years 1650 – 1900 a gradual economic emancipation process of an at one time accepted, at another time expelled, now here partially assimilated, now there gradually liberalizing sub-group filling open niches, seizing each opportunity of social improvement as soon as it was detected[31]. Therefore they were mainly to be found in trading, banking[32], intellectual professions (as far as socially accepted) and crafts that were not organized in exclusive guilds as e.g. butchers and tanners. </div> <bR> <div> And after many years latest of all, science showed up at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century as a novel field of activity, maybe only performing the function of an open niche, notwithstanding the widespread “numerus clausus” around many European universities. In its turn the burgeoning scientific knowledge induced even in medicine many new specializations that were not yet occupied by the establishment. This phenomenon was clearly observable in Germany, for a considerable period the leading country in science. The percentage of Jewish students was growing with the result that some years later also the participation in the academic staff grew considerably. However the overt and covert anti-Semitism precluded the top talent from tenure, only permitting a post as Privatdozent as the best position that could be attained by a Jew at a University within Germany[33]. Accepted but despised. But those who managed in those days to enter in this German system were anyhow in the forefront of the then medicine, natural sciences and mathematics[34].  </div> <bR> <div> By comparison the Jews in Hungary after 1783 were much better off[35], for the Habsburg Joseph II gave (or: imposed on?) them officially the possibility to assimilate. Hungary was probably the first European country where they were fully accepted and integrated as fellow-citizens, with even around 350 ennobled at the end of the 19th century. Around those years a large percentage (40-50%) of the Hungarian bankers, intelligentsia and artists was Jewish. With a political U-turn this “Hungarian Jewish Golden Age” was brought to a conclusion in 1920, when Hungarian government became outright anti-Semitic, readily going along with the slumbering Volksempfinden. It made many well-educated youngsters from the excellent Hungarian gymnasia[36], Jewish as well as non-Jewish, leave the country to finish their study on German universities. So some of them entered the stormy developments on the front-line of the modern physics and became leading players, as is witnessed by the many Nobel Prizes that they earned[37].</div> <bR> <div> Further to the east, particularly in Russia the position of the Jews has always been much more difficult. Originally Jews were never allowed to live in Russia, with the exception of two towns, Moscow and St. Petersburg, where small groups were tolerated from interested motives: trade relations. However Russia acquired hundreds of thousands Jews when Poland was split up. They got their unwanted population as soon as the plunder was shared out. The Russians hurried to curtail this problem. They first issued the “Pale of Settlement”, confining the Jews to a particular area, followed in later years by hundreds of decrees to reduce the economic activity of Jews till they were deprived of any means of subsistence. They were not only first forbidden to own land and live in the countryside, but were also somewhat later by decree expelled from some of the larger cities. After some time even the Moscow and St. Petersburg Jews were also forcibly chased away to the “Pale”. This whole package of measures forced the Russian Jews to build settlements just outside the limits of small towns, settlements known as “shjtetl”. These shjtetl, consisting mainly of wooden houses, as nearly all their inhabitants[38] did not survive the Second World War[39]. The miserable conditions in Russia stimulated a massive emigration of the pauperized Jews to the USA already several decades before 1933, when the political change in Germany caused another efflux from Europe. Between 1933 and 1938 about 40% of German faculty (not only Jews!) went away, mainly to the westward. It heralded the new era where Germany lost its world’s ranking as the focal point of science. A whole climate of science crossed the Atlantic[40]. Consequently science’s lingua franca switched definitively from German to English. The stream from Germany, also containing the Hungarian top-layer, brought the avant-garde of science to the U.S. and the Russian stream generated after their arrival by procreation a considerable percentage of the next generations of scientists[41]. The Russian exodus did not result in a complete disappearance of the Russian Jewish population. Those who stayed still had a considerable impact on society, as witness the 25% (and over) of the Russian scientific elite, which the Jews accounted for in the 1970s.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Jewish family values and strategy of the Jewish mother</B></div> <div> “Strong bonds of love and mutual dependency between mother and child are traditional among Jews. For most of their history they have occupied the position of a beleaguered minority exposed to hostility, as well as to the pressure to abandon their faith and take up the ways of the majority. Various practices evolved among Diaspora Jews to strengthen and fortify the child to cope with these pressures”[42] Soon after their arrival in the U.S. the Jewish immigrants showed a pattern of markedly smaller families than the non-Jewish immigrants. This in itself already facilitates a larger investment, both intellectually and financially, in the children, which in its turn increases the chance for upward social mobility. The standards and expectations of Jewish mothers with respect to their children were extremely high, and anything but modest. “When her son began to make the first feeble sounds on his violin a Jewish mother already visioned another Elman or Heifetz. If he showed scientific proficiency she foresaw another Einstein.”[43] But on the other hand there was a profound awareness about the competitive environment. “A Jew, parents would repeatedly remind their children, had to be twice as qualified as a Gentile in order to garner the same rewards, and it was this kind of hardheaded realism[44], and not simply their respect for learning[45], that led them to stress educational attainment and excellence so heavily.”[46] The strategy of the Jewish mother comprised several habits and procedures that fostered their children’s climb on the social ladder. A Jewish home is a talkative society. As is well known at present, verbal proficiency, unconsciously acquired at home, give children an enormous headstart in the formal school system. Besides, mothers very often consciously intervened to extend the pupilage as much as possible and to screen their Schatzen from peer groups that could possibly undermine the rosy dreams about their projected future. The anti-semitism of the surrounding society in itself gave already quite a solid backing behind this policy. </div> <bR> <div> Intensive networking (although in those days that particular term was not yet invented) was a popular pastime amongst Jewish mothers. Here they were not only bragging about the exceptional achievements and “chochma”[47] of their children, but exchanged also very useful information via those success stories, in particular about employment opportunities to escape from poverty. “Further with respect to learning and intellectual matters generally, they encouraged the development of self-reliance and autonomy but they were reluctant to grant their children other forms of independence or to impose any serious responsibility on them until they had completed their education and were ready to assume the obligations of marriage and career.”[48] “Mainst as du bist shoin a ganzer mensch?”[49] Controlling the children more by argumentation than by punitive measures. Still the far and wide spreaded caricature of the neurotic relationship between Jewish mothers and sons as pictured either in a book like “Portnoy’s Complaint”[50] or in a “Woody Allen movie” is more fiction than fact; it is not supported by evidence.[51]</div> <bR> <div> Obviously many non-Jewish mothers followed a similar (but not identical) strategy as the Jewish ones, e.g. those with Unitarian, Quaker, Episcopalian and Presbyterian (WASP’s)[52] background. It comprises the emphasis on extended dependence, high expectations for their children - consequently a rather long period of caring and protecting at home - a stress on general moral principles, tolerant with respect to behaviour at home and refraining from physical punishment. And as can be seen from the Hardy article (see ref. 48) with rather equal and sometimes with even more success than the Jews. Where we have to take into account that they were launching their children from a much better middle-class starting position than the Jews, who struggled their way up from pauperism.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Emancipation revisited</B></div> <div>  “In the 1890s a Russian journalist, investigating the fate of Russian Jews in America, found only a few dozen Russian Jews in medicine and law and hardly any in the teaching profession. By the first decade of the 1900s there were 400 to 600 Russian Jewish physicians in New York, along with several thousand in teaching, and many in other professions. By 1930 in New York City, where Jews were one fourth of the population, they comprised 55% of that city’s physicians, 64% of its dentists, and 65% of its lawyers – all by way of professional education.”[53] This supposition of emancipation finds also great support in sociological investigations that have been carried out amongst American scientists and scholars to find out whether the academic success rate is related to the religious background[54]. Success rate is here defined as a productivity index PI[55] derived from the percentage of students that obtained a doctorate related to the supply of baccalaureates (even corrected for the ratio of male/female participation). The differences are spectacular. Detected values cover a range from 14 till 139. A course categorization of the data measured after World War II brings the Jews on top, the Protestants in the middle and the Roman-Catholics down on the list. However when the Protestants are split up in different sub-groups a very different picture emerges. Then we see Unitarians (with their solemn creed “We ask all alike to think, not all to think alike”) and Quakers far ahead of the Jews (score 139 against 83) and the Roman Catholics end up way behind with their score of 23. These are no marginal differences. Another remarkable phenomenon is the shift of the Jews from a pre-World War-II score 22 to one of 83 around 1955. “The great upsurge of the Middle Atlantic region, especially New York, and the more moderate gains of the New England states in the time period 1950 to 1961 are most easily interpreted as being due to the children and grandchildren of impoverished Jewish immigrants, largely from the eastern European cultural area, who inundated these regions in the period from 1880 to 1924[56]. The great bulk of American Jews are descendants of these immigrants”[57]. Besides, this emancipation shock must have been strongly related to the policy of “numerus clausus for Jews”, which many American universities, certainly those from the Ivy League, did not abolish until the 1940s[58]. Till those days access to quality universities was denied. And emancipation only happens when three factors come to combine action: capability (including the cultural features), formal education and opportunity. The above data suggest a considerable influence of culture on the motivation for learning[59]. It seems that even among the impoverished secularized Jewish immigrants these cultural traits were still transmitted to their descendants, apparently at least two generations further down[60]. “My parents transmitted to me our people’s ancient reverence of learning, which inspired my efforts.”[61] In general we see that all the great performers, Protestants as well as Jews[62], who were originally educated in a religious family became secularized at an advanced age. Paradoxically the “least Jewish” Jews were the ones that attained the upper ranks of the scientific elite.</div> <bR> <div> What are the other particular cultural features that favour success in learning? The Hardy publication[63] sheds some light on these cultural values that are associated with a high production of scholars and scientists. 1. Naturalism, that means a belief in a world of order, law, pattern and meaning. 2. Intrinsic valuation of learning and knowledge: to be learned and wise is highly valued (Compare also Rabi’s story). 3. Dignity of man: optimism concerning man’s ability to discover truth, accomplish things and change the world. 4. Personal dedication: seriousness of purpose, sense of mission, long range striving and a responsibility beyond family. 5. Equalitarianism: active promotion of causes to improve status of disadvantaged; high status for woman and children; pacifism. 6. Anti-traditional: not satisfied with established ways of doing things; restless, inquiring spirit. 7. Centered on near future: concerned with this world; orientation toward the foreseeable future. That’s quite a shopping list. As easily can be verified there exists quite a close agreement with the Jewish family values.  </div> <bR> <div> <B>Similarity between the emancipation of Jews and Chinese</B></div> <div> During the period that I worked on my thesis my attention was already drawn to the increasing number of Chinese authors above publications from American universities. Now I wonder whether the emancipation (and acceptation) of this sub-group in the U.S. carried into effect along the same lines as it happened with the Jews in Europe. At present, about 40 years later, we got already in the situation that we could read recently[64]: “Chinese-Americans form a cornerstone of the US scientific workforce”. The similarities are striking[65]. We see here also a culture in a Diaspora (about 10% of the Chinese live outside China, that is more than 100 million!) with an ancient reverence for learning together with a strong position in medicine, which dates much further back than the Jewish medical expertise. In the regions where the Chinese immigrated overseas they similarly filled the niche of trading and banking, rooted in their international network. They have family evelywhere! At any rate they surpassed the Jews by far in disseminating their cuisine around the world. No village in the “global village” without a Chinese restaurant! Maybe Chinese culture is intrinsically the most science oriented of all cultures because Chinese science and technology were for an extended period centuries ahead[66] of any other culture[67] on earth before it declined under the consequences of political decisions.  </div> <bR> <div> <B>Conclusion</B></div> <div> Research in the social sciences quite often ends up in such an anticlimax: The results are obvious (at least for some people) and what’s more you can hardly apply the results for improving society. Unlike a computer program history cannot rerun. But at least the social phenomenon is now “understood” as soon as some statistical evidence can be “coughed up”. Yes, excellent education at home amplified by an ivy-league school system pays off, and will materialize when the opportunities present itself. But for some time past that is already common knowledge! I’m afraid that major deficiencies of parental education cannot be cured by extending formal school programs. School can add but not revise; it is a filling station, not a repair shop. I believe, although there is also quite some experimental evidence[68], that crucial elements of personality are established before the age of six. An inquiring mind, suitable for research in later life, is crafted from the child’s mental building materials in early life. Perhaps for the most flexible amongst us some filing and stimulation is still possible at a more advanced age. To become a ballerina of worldwide fame not only a stimulating environment, a particular physical structure, personal dedication, excellent coaching and top-notch training are required, but you also have to make a start at the age of four. And last but not least: You have to find an appointment with an excellent “corps de ballet”. Off course exceptions always exist, but they don’t clarify the general mechanism. Alfred Brendel wasn’t born in a musical family and in addition lacked a well-developed memory, so it is a miracle that he developed into a world-famous piano-player.  </div> <bR> <div> From an operational viewpoint we identify three important factors in the production process of physical scientists: capabilities, schooling, and opportunities. Are the typical Jewish capabilities due to genetic or cultural features? We can hardly believe in a genetic source because Jews played no role in the genesis of the modern physical sciences, neither in establishing European universities, nor even more remarkably in modern astronomy (till World War-II). Whereas they were rather important in pre-modern astronomy and as appears from literature (see ref 7) were very well informed about the modern developments. There exists also no preference for the physical sciences amongst Jews when we compare them with non-Jews. The percentages are exactly the same, taking the measuring accuracy into account. So by elimination we are left with the cultural features as discussed above.   </div> <bR> <div> Seeds must fall on fertile ground before they can bear fruit. This applies probably to mental seeds as well. Development of personality starts from day one. Children’s brains show in the first years probably no preference for their intellectual development; it is immaterial whether the training ground is religious or secular. Even if the brains start their development in a religious environment they can develop into a scientific brain. However the production rate shows a strong dependence on the religious background. At the same time, equally distributed over the different backgrounds, more often than not the scientific brains wake up in secular country at the end of the day.</div> <bR> <div> For scientific proficiency it is essential that the intellectual development, which germinated at an early age at home and was watered every day, will also be followed by a high quality formal education. Without formal education participation is not possible in the scientific arena. An inquiring mind in itself is no ticket of admission. All the winners received a degree from a first class institute.  </div> <bR> <div> Even schooling is of no avail in the absence of opportunities. An opportunity means an open niche that can be occupied. In this respect various countries show very different histories with respect to their acceptance of Jews as full-fledged citizens, and some never did up to the present day. Therefore the emancipation processes of Jews and in particular their admission in science in the various abovementioned countries develloped along very different lines. In general Jews show a bias towards the more theoretical and emergent fields of expertise, and sometimes, like in medicine, the areas with a lower status. It is very well possible that this effect is much more induced by the available open niches than by a Jewish preference. It is always easier to fill a vacancy than to enforce a replacement substitution. It seems that no matter what field of expertise is considered the success percentage of Jews is rather high compared to that from people with another background. Perhaps that this latter phenomenon has to be related with the abovementioned “harheaded realism”, a driving force that Flato described as “minority spirit”.[69]</div> <bR> <div> All this circumstantial evidence points to a social emancipation process of a minority that avails itself of the opportunities offered by the surrounding socio-economical and political changes via the exploitation of its cultural assets.</div> <bR> <div> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div> <div> <B>References</B></div> <bR> <div> [1]   Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Natuurkunde issued by the Dutch Physical Society.</div> <bR> <div> [2]   My definition of Meme = A concept shared with other people. The word meme was introduced by R. Dawkins as a mental building block (in the development of knowledge) equivalent to the gene (in the development of creatures during evolution). </div> <bR> <div> [3]   E.H. Schein, The Corporate Culture Survival Guide: Sense and nonsense about culture change, Jossey-Bas Inc., San Francisco (John Wiley & Sons Inc.), 1999</div> <bR> <div> [4]   It is a modern phenomenon because after the Jews have contributed to the generation of science and technology since the start of human civilization, they have later on either been removed by expulsion or their contributions remained invisible because they were anonymously absorbed by their usurpers. See from S. Kurinsky: The Glassmakers (An Odyssey of the Jews), Hippocrene Books, 1991 and The eighth day (The hidden history of the Jewish contribution to civilization), Jason Aronson, Inc., 1994.   </div> <bR> <div> [5]   It is e.g. known that the Messinan Mosè Bonavoglia (Jewish name Mohe Heftz), a court doctor and diplomat, got his medical degree from the University of Padua in 1420. Also young Polish Jews went during the 15th century to Padua to study medicine that provided prospects for considerable social and economic improvement, because amongst Polish kings and nobles it was considered fashionable to employ Jewish physicians.</div> <bR> <div> [6]   Leiden contributed to this process only hundreds of years later than Padua, because it was founded in 1575.</div> <bR> <div> [7]   D.B. Ruderman, Jewish thought and scientific discovery in early modern Europe, Yale Univ. Press, 1995</div> <bR> <div> [8]   M. Flato, The power of mathematics, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, 1992, pg. 84</div> <bR> <div> [9]   A. Pais, The genius of science, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2000</div> <bR> <div> [10]   R. Hoffmann & S. Leibowitz Schmidt, Old wine, new flasks: reflections on science and Jewish tradition, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1997</div> <bR> <div> [11]   We have to come back to the meaning of metaphysical. This word like many other philosophical entities, as ontology, epistemology, philosophical, synthetic, analytic, law, theory..... have a different meaning with each author. It is only one of the many reasons why philosophy of science is such a total mess.</div> <bR> <div> [12]   M. Bunge, Philosophy of physics, D. Reidel Publ. Comp., Dordrecht, 1973, pg. 139</div> <bR> <div> [13]   B. Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988 on p. 269 mentions that around 1950 in the SU 15.5% of the scientists (averaged over universities, research institutes, academies and affiliated institutions) were Jews, whereas their demographic percentage was only around 1% (according to the official census of 1959: 2,267,814 Jews = 1,09 % of the total SU population). By anti-Jewish discrimination their percentage dropped from 15.5 % to 5.7 % in 1975, still relatively high.</div> <bR> <div>       H. Zuckerman, Scientific Elite, The Free Press, 1977, shows on p. 75 a table from which we can calculate that between 1901 and 1975 in the USA 12.7% of the professoriate in the physical sciences ( = Chemistry, Physics and Biological Sciences) came from a Jewish background, whereas their demographic percentage was about 3%.</div> <bR> <div> [14]   Recalculating numbers from a survey of the early seventies (pages 266-267 from S.M. Lipset and E.C. Ladd, Jewish Academics in the United States, in M. Sklare (ed.), The Jew in American Society, Behrman House Inc., 1974) reveal that 13.8% of all the academics with a Jewish background have an appointment in the Physical Sciences, whereas the percentage for the academia as a whole hardly differs: 13.4%. The category physical sciences include a.o. physics (Jews 5%, Overall 3%) and mathematics (Jews 5.4%, Overall 5%). That means that in academia 86% of the Jews as well as of the Gentiles have chosen a non-physical specialty.</div> <bR> <div> [15]   J.S. Rigden, Rabi, scientist and citizen, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2000</div> <bR> <div> [16]   The excommunication of Spinoza had a theological background. “It is …. clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses.” (See e.g., R.E. Friedman, Who wrote the Bible, HarperSanFrancisco 1989, p. 21) </div> <bR> <div> [17]   See for a modern example:  www.bethshalomseattle.org/99JudaismandScience.htm</div> <bR> <div> [18]   Autobiography on Website Nobel Prizes: http://www.nobel.se</div> <bR> <div> [19]   Haïm Brezis is infused with the same spirit as can be tasted from his book“Haïm Brezis, un mathémacien Juif (Entretien avec Jacques Vauthier)”, Beauchesne, 1999.    </div> <bR> <div> [20]   There is no denying that there exists a strong relationship between religion and attitude towards study. That does not mean that everybody agrees about the proper mechanism that generates this observed relationship. As contrasted with the view of Blumberg and Brezis it is very well possible that the prevailing culture (that’s the way we do things here!) is giving birth, by playing the role of chicken and egg, both to the modelling of the various views within a religion as well as to the particular attitude towards science.  See e.g. I.G. Barbour, Religion and Science, HarperSanFrancisco, 1997. This subject is a bit too wide-ranging to setlle in a short note.    </div> <bR> <div> [21]   Maybe such an impact is described by Y. Rabkin, on page 26 in The interaction of scientific & Jewish cultures: An historical overview, the first chapter in Y. Rabkin and I. Robinson, The interaction of scientific and Jewish cultures in modern times, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1995: “Emphasis on rational continuity and cumulation of knowledge represents another similarity [between Judaism and science, MEvK]. Continuity certifies the legitimacy of new ideas, both in Judaism and in science. Both operate within established rational methodologies, properly codified and explained. Unverifiable sources of insight are anathema to both. To resort to visions, revelations or dreams in order to justify new ideas is as unthinkable in rabbinic Judaism as it is in modern science.” </div> <bR> <div> [22]   Words of Arno Penzias (Nobel Prize Physics, 1978) in an interview by Carol Lof (1980)</div> <bR> <div> [23]   I.I. Rabi, From a recorded interview by T.S. Kuhn, New York, 8 December 1963</div> <bR> <div> [24]   See A. Pais, pg 267</div> <bR> <div> [25]   See M. Flato, pg. 84</div> <bR> <div> [26]   In 1492 the cleansing couple Isabella of Castilia and Ferdinand of Aragon swept all the Jews from Spain by decree.</div> <bR> <div> [27]   Y. Rabkin, on page 13 in The interaction of scientific & Jewish cultures: An historical overview, the first chapter in Y. Rabkin and I. Robinson, The interaction of scientific and Jewish cultures in modern times, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1995 </div> <bR> <div> [28]   M.A. Schulvass, “From East to West”, Wayne State University Press, 1971.</div> <bR> <div> [29]   J.M. Efron, “Medicine and the German Jews”, Yale University Press, p. 44</div> <bR> <div> [30]   ibidem, p. 236</div> <bR> <div> [31]   Worth mentioning is of course the enormous influence of the French Revolution and the expansive policy of Napoleon around 1800 on the ideas about minorities and civil rights all around Europe. </div> <bR> <div> [32]   In those firmly established agricultural economies Jews were the only source of mobile capital, court Jews and banks for the rulers, pawnbrokers and well-to-do cattle traders to serve the common man.  </div> <bR> <div> [33]   Numbers for the medical school at the University of Berlin in 1908 can serve as an example (number of Jews between parentheses): Full professor 19 (0), Associate professor 11 (3), Assistant professor 43 (9), Privatdozenten (unsalaried) 113 (44). </div> <bR> <div> [34]   If the reader considers this history of German Jewry a bit short I can advise to read the magnum opus “Deutsch-juedische Geschichte in der Neuzeit” (4 Bde), herausgegeben von M.A. Meyer und M. Brenner, C.H. Beck, 2000. It has also been issued in English as German-Jewish History in Modern Times, Michael Meyer, Editor, Michael Brenner, Assistant Editor., Columbia University Press, 1996-1998.</div> <bR> <div> [35]   An unjustified simplification because of a pogrom dip around 1848-49 and e.g blood libel in 1882 in the town of Tisza-Eszlar (in which the townsfolk accused the local Jews of using the blood of a young girl to bake Passover matzos). Even the Dreyfus Affair had a Hungarian connection in the person of Graf Eszterhazy, the son of Hungarian nobility, who falsely accused the Jewish army officer Dreyfus. One can say that the history of Hungary and the Hungarian Jews over a period of 1000 years is very, very complicated with many alternating periods of tolerance, acceptance, esteem, revilement, vilification, persecution, lynchings, pogroms and extermination.   </div> <bR> <div> [36]   G. Marx, The Hungarian Gymnasium, Europhysics News, nov/dec 1999, page 130</div> <bR> <div> [37]   The percentage of (ex-) Hungarian Nobel Laureates outweighs their demographic percentage considerably. Many a man is unaware of the Hungarian background of e.g. Grossmann, Wigner, von Neumann and Teller, because of their German names.  </div> <bR> <div> [38]   Typically 1000 – 5000 people, with a few exceptions that amounted to 20,000.</div> <bR> <div> [39]   Y. Eliach, There once was a world, Little, Brown and Comp., Boston, 1998</div> <bR> <div> [40]   J. Medawar and D. Pyke, Hitler’s Gift: Scientists who fled Nazi Germany, Arcade Publishing, New York, 2001</div> <bR> <div> [41]   In the Russian 1897 census 5,189,400 Jews were counted; they constituted 4.13% of the total Russian population and about one-half of world Jewry. By 1970 half of world Jewry, about 6 million Jews, lived in the US (about 2.5% of total US population).</div> <bR> <div> [42]   Z. Smith Blau, The strategy of the Jewish mother, a chapter in M. Sklare (ed.), The Jew in American Society, Behrman House Inc., New York, 1974, p. 165 </div> <bR> <div> [43]   ibidem</div> <bR> <div> [44]   This attitude of Jews toward labor was similarly viewed from a more religious angle already about 2000 years ago by the pragmatical Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai (advocating a policy of dealing through diplomacy with the Romans instead of fighting them), who declared that: “If a man is planting a tree and is told that the Messiah has come, he must first complete the planting and only then go to meet the Redeemer.” Citation to be found in S. Kurinsky, The eighth day, Jason Aronson, Inc., 1994, p. 331 </div> <bR> <div> [45]   This respect for learning is mentioned by all authors that describe Jewish culture. It shows itself in many guises. Once in early life I was acquainted with a family with an insufferably conceited young boy, the intellectual of the family. He was the only one within the family who entered the university later on. His terrorizing caprices were accepted both by his parents and by his brothers and sisters because he was recogned as the “brains” of the family. A much more sympathetic example of this cultural feature is described in the introduction of The Jew in American Society (ed. M. Sklare) on page 6-7, although the scene was enacted in 1909 at the Academy of Jewish Studies in St. Petersburg. This institute was established and managed by Baron David Günzberg, a man of great wealth and considerable learning. In the Russian Academic culture at that time the distance between such a renowned professor and his students was of astromic magnitude compared to the present day American pendant. A delegation of students, dissatisfied with the Academy’s approach to Jewish history, confronted the Baron with a lack of social and economic expertise in the staff, that the students felt necessary to widen their knowledge. Offended the Baron rose from his chair, pointing his finger towards the books in his great library, and said: ”Dear ones, I am dieply grieved by this request of yours. …….Do you really think it is so important to know exactly when the Gentiles permitted us to engage in trade and when those malicious people forced us to be moneylenders? What good will the information do you? And wouldn’t it be a pity to spend your precious time on this when there are still so many rooms in the mansion of Jewish scholarship that are closed to you and so many great books waiting for you?……If you do research on horses – there is such a science, too – it is obviously very important to investigate what fodder should be put in the horses’ crib: oats or barley. But when the subject of your study is the wisdom of the chosen people, do you think that their fodder ….. should concern you?” Surprisingly enough Zalman Shazar (later president of Israel 1963 – 1973) and his fellow students achieved their objective despite the fact that the Baron’s hold over the students was absolute. (Not only did he underwrite the budget of the academy but bribed the police to arrange residence permits in St. Petersburg for students who lacked them.) Soon after this confrontation the Baron invited Wischnitzer [the scholar that the students had suggested] to offer a course on “The economic history of the Jews.” A true aristocrat, Baron Günzberg apparantly felt, that despite his power, he had no right to deprive students of knowledge which they sought to acquire.          </div> <bR> <div> [46]   Z. Smith Blau</div> <bR> <div> [47]   Is used in many related meanings: wisdom, brightness, cleverness, wit. </div> <bR> <div> [48]   ibidem</div> <bR> <div> [49]   ibidem, transl.: You think you are already a mature human being?</div> <bR> <div> [50]   Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint, Jonathan Cape Ltd., London, 1969</div> <bR> <div> [51]   L. Srole, T. Langner, et al., Mental Health in the Metropolis, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962, Vol. 1, pages 305-306. Sobrity is a another well-known mental health subject in which Jews stand out favourably from others, the more remarkable because their religion has even incorporated alcoholic beverages in their worshipping procedures. Abstinence is not preached. See also J.M. Ebron, Medicin and the German Jews, Yale University Press, 2001, p.108.</div> <bR> <div> [52]   White Anglo-Saxon Protestants </div> <bR> <div> [53]   S.M. Lipset and E. Raab, Jews and the New American Scene, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1995, page22</div> <bR> <div> [54]   K.R. Hardy, Social origins of American scientists and scholars, Science 185, 497 (1974)   </div> <bR> <div> [55]   ibidem, PI(source) = N(t,f) from source*1000 / [M(t) + F(t)]*W(t,f) where N(t,f) is the number of doctorate recipients within a specified time and field; M(t) and F(t) are, respectively, the number of male and female graduates within a specified time; and W(t,f) is [N(F)/N(M)](t,f)*[M/F](t) where N(F) and N(M) are, respectively, the number of male and female doctorates. This weight permits comparisons between sources which graduate varying proportions of woman to man.   </div> <bR> <div> [56]   ibidem</div> <bR> <div> [57]   F.L. Strodtbeck, in Talent and society (Eds. D.C. McClelland, A.L. Baldwin, U. Bronfenbrenner and F.L. Strodtbeck), van Nostrand, Princeton, N.J., 1958, pg. 135</div> <bR> <div> [58]   Y. Rabkin, on page 19 in The interaction of scientific & Jewish cultures: An historical overview, the first chapter in Y. Rabkin and I. Robinson, The interaction of scientific and Jewish cultures in modern times, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1995</div> <bR> <div> [59]   Before WWII circulated the following drollery: A young man with a violin case under his arm asked an aged man on the street to show him the way to the Concert Hall. Whereupon the man replied, meanwhile tapping the younger one cheeringly on his shoulder: “Studieren, studieren,….studieren!”</div> <bR> <div> [60]    Maybe even to the 3rd and 4th generation, because at the beginning of the 1990’s, 87% of college-age Jews was enrolled in higher education, as compared with 40% for the population (of the U.S.) at large. And like the Jewish faculty, they are heavily located in the schools with higher academic standards. (from S.M. Lipset and E. Raab, Jews and the New American Scene, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1995, page 27). Educational differences in the European past were also very spectacular. In the Russian Pale at the end of the 19th century literacy was 60% for Jewish boys and 30% for non-Jewish boys. In 1906 –1907 only 8% of Prussian children received elementary education, whereas it was 59% for Jewish children. (See J.M. Efron, Medicine and the German Jews, p.236)         </div> <bR> <div> [61]   B. P. Zeigler, Theory of modeling and simulation, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1976, introduction p. xiv</div> <bR> <div> [62]   Remarkably are the differences in the social origins of these two groups, where “four of every five of the Christian laureates but only about a quarter of the Jewish laureates come from the upper reaches of the occupational distribution.” See H. Zuckerman, Scientific elite, The Free Press / Macmillan, New York, 1977, page 79.</div> <bR> <div> [63]   K.R. Hardy, Social origins of American scientists and scholars, Science 185, 497 (1974) </div> <bR> <div> [64]   See “Which side are you on?”, Nature 412, 10 (5 July 2001)</div> <bR> <div> [65]   This striking similarity has been noticed by more people. In Januari 1994 a conference was organized in La Jolla (California) around this theme. The different contributions were brought together in “Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the modern transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe” by D. Chirot and A. Reid. Issued by the Jackson School Publications in International Studies, University of Washington Press, 1997. This book explores the reasons why the Jews in Central Europe and the Cinese in S.E.-Asia have both been succesful and stigmatized, highly essential for the economic developments but still not fully accepted by their compatriots. By many people such a book is not welcomed. The separate subjects hurt already many a person’s sensibilities, let alone when somebody on top of it all is compared with a Jew. As D. Chirot formulates himself this problem in his introduction: “It is easy to see how quickly a discussion of these matters could become sensitive and controversial, even among supposedly dispassionate scholars.”         </div> <bR> <div> [66]   See the series edited by J. Needham; even for the Chinese themselves the unsurpassed authority on Chinese science.</div> <bR> <div> [67]   That applies to all cultures, maybe with the sole exception of the Jewish during antiquity. See abovementioned books of  S. Kurinsky.</div> <bR> <div> [68]   Immediately after World War-II a Kindergarten project started in Reggio Emilia (Italia) under the inspiring guidance of Loris Malaguzzi. This project, still in existence and now covering more than 30 Kindergartens, acquired world fame by the way the children are given the opportunity to develop their own characteristic personality. This work is described in “The Hundred Languages of Children, The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education” issued by the editors Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, and George Forman with the cooperation of many authors and published by Ablex, 1993.</div> <bR> <div> [69]   I am aware that this is an over-simplification. Scientific success is a highly non-linear process. The excellent scientists attract the best students and acquire a disproportionate share from the total budget, a very effective positive feedback loop. In the article no distinction is made between success and recognition, although they are very different. The scientific success of Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin and Emmy Noether was very great, however their recognition leaves much to be desired. Being a woman and Jewish too is apparently a double handicap.     </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>