If we are talking of level of Euler etc that doesn't happen even in the US/Germany with apparently higher mean IQ & resources than India. A part of it is the expanding frontier of science. The edge of science today is at a large radius& it may not be easy to recognize anything at
that edge without a lot of effort. For example, people with modest mathematical capacity& some effort can at least understand some of the discoveries of Gauss or Ramanujan to get a feel for why they were genii. Closer to our times 2 Jewish intellectual are mentioned as being at
that level: Witten, a mathematical physicist & Grothendieck the mathematician. Most commoners cannot grasp the rarified heights at which they operate. With Kepler or Newton we get an immediate feel for palpable problems like planetary motion. With Witten we don't even know if all
his rarified mathematics describes a real physics in the first place. It may not be known for a long time.
Another major issue characteristic of Euro-American scientific culture is gate-keeping, with the gatekeeper themselves being rather mediocre. Even if you are a genius, you
Another major issue characteristic of Euro-American scientific culture is gate-keeping, with the gatekeeper themselves being rather mediocre. Even if you are a genius, you
are not going to be able to publish your work in the formal venues for the gatekeepers operate by name& place recognition. It happened to Ramanujan too -- the first people he contacted ignore him but he was luck that Hardy&Littlewood saw him for what he was. There is also the
whole apparatus for getting ahead in science which involves politics (not all geniuses are good at that). That filter usually selects for good managers of large groups rather than genii. A look at the Med&Phys &some Chem Nobel prizes in the past 20 yrs shows hardly any genii but
high energy lab managers operating in relatively virgin territory. Thus, I'd say across cultures, the scope for the impact of a true genius has probably considerably lessened in the past 40-50 years. If one is born with such smarts there might be other avenues beyond academia
^*Phys= physiology (not physics)
To labor one specific point: in theory, given the normal distribution, we should indeed have lots of those even assuming an Indian IQ profile of(means& weights): 4*85+.35*90+.15*95+.1*102. So the question boils down to do they exist but don't get into academia or they don't exist
^typo in above should have read: .4*85+.35*90+.15*95+.1*102
If you went to an elite college in India you will see some of those smart types with IQ in the "Nobel prize" range. But why don't you see it translate. IMO it boils down to: 1) Majority of those don't pursue academic
If you went to an elite college in India you will see some of those smart types with IQ in the "Nobel prize" range. But why don't you see it translate. IMO it boils down to: 1) Majority of those don't pursue academic
science/mathematics. IMO Academic inclination is much lower among H high IQ classes than Jews even if their IQs are comparable in tests. 2) H intellectual classes are poorly organized, don't support/boost each other & don't exert much influence on funding bodies. 3) I do think
there have been several "Nobel Prize" level H scientists (at least in Med&Phys & some Chem) kind of prizes who simply were ignored.
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