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It seems you're discriminating positively. The Jewish population in Hungary was very large at the time. Many of them were just farmers. Some of them were doctor
by giorgioz 5y ago
It seems you're discriminating positively.
The Jewish population in Hungary was very large at the time.
Many of them were just farmers. Some of them were doctors and engineers and business-men.
Those exceptional mathematicians were indeed an exception.
This is not to negatively discriminate.
Believing that an ethnicity has super-powers or super-flaws is a bias. You notice all the exceptions and don't notice all the other average samples that don't confirm your hypothesis.
Also small sample of populations are just more likely to have extreme values. This is more because of the narrow sample.
Finally on the language part, great scientists flew nazi countries from all over Europe. Only some of them were Hungarian-speaking. Enrico Fermi was from Rome, from a not particularly religious Catholic family. Enrico Fermi went to the US for better opportunities AND to protect his wife Laura whom was Jewish.
- rbanffy 5y ago> whom was Jewish. Biased sample indeed. The brilliant scientists who had no reason to flee didn’t and it’s not surprising the reasons to flee are over represented in a sample taken from those who did. I also suspect a lot of Jewish Hungarians who fled were not brilliant scientists, just rich or talented enough to afford escaping.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoNo, you misunderstand. In 80 years before or since, these dozen or so ethnically Jewish scientists were literally the only world-leading Hungarian scientists. (Maybe I would add Eotvos and Szenty-Gyorgyi, but that’s about it…) Given that only 5% of the pre-WW2 population of Hungary was Jewish, the fact that 80% of geniuses were of Jewish parentage is highly unusual, emigration or not.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]