5 ms·

> Hinton has said that when he was growing up, his mother gave him two choices: “Be an academic or be a failure.” His family tree is branch-breakingly weighted

by strin 7y ago

> Hinton has said that when he was growing up, his mother gave him two choices: “Be an academic or be a failure.” His family tree is branch-breakingly weighted with scientists. His great-great-grandfather was George Boole, founder of Boolean logic, familiar to anyone who has done a “Boolean search.” One of George Boole’s sons-in-law was Charles Howard Hinton, Geoffrey’s great-grandfather, a mathematician and sci-fi writer who coined the concept of a “tesseract” (a four-dimensional object we can see in the 3-D world as a cube—well known to all readers of the classic children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time), and who ended up in the U.S. Interesting fact from reading this that normally gets neglected in media.

jjcc 7y ago
His aunt is the first foreigner who got "Chinese green card"(Permenent Residency in China). Very famous couple in China long time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hinton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hinton
opportune 7y ago
It's actually quite common. One of the most tried and true routes to getting into the best academia-oriented colleges (Harvard, MIT, Caltech, etc.) is to win one of the big science fairs. I am not sure what they are called or who their sponsors are these days, but they used be sponsored by Westinghouse, Intel, and Siemens. Anyway, if you look at bios of winners or semifinalists, they almost always have a close relative in academia. Which in these competitions is actually a massive competitive advantage since your relative can get you into labs, access to equipment, and push you towards fruitful projects they quietly are guiding from the background. Same with a lot of the international olympiads, very often the kids come from intense tiger parent families that are already in academia or do everything they can to get their kids the best physics/math/whatever tutors (the main exceptions to this are usually kids in large metro areas going to top magnet schools). And then of course once you're in these top academic institutes, your relatives can further help you network and get into the best labs, show you how to get the best fellowships and academic internships to set you up for top grad schools, etc. Plus now that you have a top olympiad/science fair your credentials will give you a big plus in competing against others without them
- Bostonian 7y ago
  I agree that academics at research universities can provide more opportunities for their children, but they are also bequeathing genes for higher IQ to their children, and I'd guess that the genetic influence is at least as strong as the environmental one. Adoption studies have generally found that the academic achievement of adoptees is more correlated to the educational level of their biological than their adoptive parents.
  - opportune 7y ago
    That's true, however here I am speaking about the highest level of competition for the best path into academia (one of the most competitive careers in the world). Large IQ studies aren't as relevant since the population of people seriously considering academia who have the ability to act on that is skewed to the relatively far right side of the distribution I ran into so many roadblocks when I started seriously looking into going into academia when I was 16-17; if you don't have top science fairs or olympiads your chances of getting into top academic undergrads are already at risk, which has negative compounding effects down the line compared to the positive compounding effects of those that do get these, especially if you are a white or asian male. Close relatives of academics and people going to top magnet schools in major metro areas have huge headstarts compared to everyone else. Having a good IQ is just one of many requisites into going into academia, accomplishment-oriented credentials are much more valuable in your early career than things like regular standardized test scores
    - mattkrause 7y ago
      The bit about the competitions specifically doesn’t ring true for me. Many friends from grad school have tenure-track jobs. None of them, as far as I know, participated in these contests. I would bet that things effectively reset once you start grad school and again once you’re in a faculty job. It is true that academic recognition tends to snowball. Winning your nth grant or fellowship is exponentially easier than the first one “because you have a track record.”
    - cma 7y ago
notfashion 7y ago
Charles Howard Hinton is actually a very prominent figure in the history of eccentric mathematicians. Anyone who read Rudy Rucker's book about the fourth dimension in the 90s knew about the earlier Hinton's bigamy and superstitions. https://books.google.ie/books?id=8J0djs-FK_8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=hinton+rucker+bigamy&source=bl&ots=WDzst7ssb5&sig=ACfU3U3a4piO8h40346bbbARGxOxfhQb3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB8uurhp_kAhW8TBUIHUIYAZEQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=hinton%20rucker%20bigamy&f=false https://books.google.ie/books?id=8J0djs-FK_8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA... http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2009/06/08/alicia-boole-charles-hinton-and-the-fourth-dimension/ http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2009/06/08/alicia-boole-charl...

by strin 7y ago

jjcc 7y ago

His aunt is the first foreigner who got "Chinese green card"(Permenent Residency in China). Very famous couple in China long time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hinton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hinton

opportune 7y ago

It's actually quite common. One of the most tried and true routes to getting into the best academia-oriented colleges (Harvard, MIT, Caltech, etc.) is to win one of the big science fairs. I am not sure what they are called or who their sponsors are these days, but they used be sponsored by Westinghouse, Intel, and Siemens. Anyway, if you look at bios of winners or semifinalists, they almost always have a close relative in academia. Which in these competitions is actually a massive competitive advantage since your relative can get you into labs, access to equipment, and push you towards fruitful projects they quietly are guiding from the background. Same with a lot of the international olympiads, very often the kids come from intense tiger parent families that are already in academia or do everything they can to get their kids the best physics/math/whatever tutors (the main exceptions to this are usually kids in large metro areas going to top magnet schools). And then of course once you're in these top academic institutes, your relatives can further help you network and get into the best labs, show you how to get the best fellowships and academic internships to set you up for top grad schools, etc. Plus now that you have a top olympiad/science fair your credentials will give you a big plus in competing against others without them

Bostonian 7y ago
I agree that academics at research universities can provide more opportunities for their children, but they are also bequeathing genes for higher IQ to their children, and I'd guess that the genetic influence is at least as strong as the environmental one. Adoption studies have generally found that the academic achievement of adoptees is more correlated to the educational level of their biological than their adoptive parents.
- opportune 7y ago
  That's true, however here I am speaking about the highest level of competition for the best path into academia (one of the most competitive careers in the world). Large IQ studies aren't as relevant since the population of people seriously considering academia who have the ability to act on that is skewed to the relatively far right side of the distribution I ran into so many roadblocks when I started seriously looking into going into academia when I was 16-17; if you don't have top science fairs or olympiads your chances of getting into top academic undergrads are already at risk, which has negative compounding effects down the line compared to the positive compounding effects of those that do get these, especially if you are a white or asian male. Close relatives of academics and people going to top magnet schools in major metro areas have huge headstarts compared to everyone else. Having a good IQ is just one of many requisites into going into academia, accomplishment-oriented credentials are much more valuable in your early career than things like regular standardized test scores
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    The bit about the competitions specifically doesn’t ring true for me. Many friends from grad school have tenure-track jobs. None of them, as far as I know, participated in these contests. I would bet that things effectively reset once you start grad school and again once you’re in a faculty job. It is true that academic recognition tends to snowball. Winning your nth grant or fellowship is exponentially easier than the first one “because you have a track record.”
  - cma 7y ago

notfashion 7y ago

Charles Howard Hinton is actually a very prominent figure in the history of eccentric mathematicians. Anyone who read Rudy Rucker's book about the fourth dimension in the 90s knew about the earlier Hinton's bigamy and superstitions. https://books.google.ie/books?id=8J0djs-FK_8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=hinton+rucker+bigamy&source=bl&ots=WDzst7ssb5&sig=ACfU3U3a4piO8h40346bbbARGxOxfhQb3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB8uurhp_kAhW8TBUIHUIYAZEQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=hinton%20rucker%20bigamy&f=false https://books.google.ie/books?id=8J0djs-FK_8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA... http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2009/06/08/alicia-boole-charles-hinton-and-the-fourth-dimension/ http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2009/06/08/alicia-boole-charl...