what? catholics and protestants number in the hundreds of millions, non-Israeli jews less than 10. that's why it's an amazing accomplishment
"The reason for the disproportionate number of Jewish winners is the premium Jews have placed on learning and scholarship," says Uzi Arad, director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Institute, Herzliya. "The tradition of reflection and scholarship has sharpened the inquisitive Jewish mind. It takes an inquisitive, nonconformist mind to break into new areas and make discoveries." There are three central theories given for Jewish academic achievement, according to Shulamit Volkov, professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of "The Magic Circle: Germans, Jews and Anti-Semites." The first theory says that Jews are cleverer than others, a theory dismissed by Volkov and other serious academics. The second theory, proposed first by an American sociologist in 1919, holds that because Jews were on the margins of society they were forced to excel. The third and more common explanation, says Volkov, states that generations of Jewish Orthodox learning later translated brilliantly into secular learning. "In fact, very often the Jewish learning tradition stood in the way of going into science, keeping some of the best minds in the yeshiva," says Volkov. "We have autobiographies of scientists who talk about how difficult it was to break away from the Orthodox world." The dramatic rise of the United States as a hothouse for Nobel Prizes following World War II is attributed partly to the large number of Jewish scientists who fled there to escape Nazism. To date, counting Kahneman's prize for economics, Israel has won five Nobel Prizes: one for literature, by Agnon in 1966, and three for peace, with Menachem Begin in 1978 and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994. That raises the question of why Israelis have not won Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine, areas in which Jews have traditionally excelled. According to Dr. Michael Sela, a distinguished scientist and former head of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, several Israeli scientists have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in the past few years, but to date none has received the coveted telephone call from Stockholm. It might comfort them to know that by the time Einstein won in 1922, he had been nominated 50 times. Alfred Nobel's will in 1896 made it clear that "no consideration whatsoever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates." Nevertheless, some say politics does play a role. "My impression is that many of the considerations made by the Nobel Prize committees are political," says Israeli writer Yehoshua Sobol. "For instance, Jimmy Carter was awarded the peace prize many years after he had finished his active life as a peacemaker because they wanted to stick it to [George] Bush. The Nobel Prize committee is made up of human beings and they are certainly not free of prejudices and political considerations."
Certainly a factor. But why more so than other cultural groups? Maybe a little Darwinism comes into play. Survival of Species? Pardon me for what I am sure will be construed as politically incorrect, but what the hell. 5000 years of discrimination. The dumb ones didn't make it. (Heard this from an Irish Sociology professor when I was in college). Peace, rs7