Jews and the Nobel Prize: Fantasy versus Fact

[Reinhard]

Karl Radl

One of the most common of all arguments made when one is debating someone else about the jews is about the 'great contribution' made by jews to human progress. This argument; popularised in modernity by the unabashedly partisan jewish historian Cecil Roth (1) (whose intellectual credibility has been pointedly criticised recently), (2) is now most frequently made by the citation of the number of jewish winners of the Nobel Prize. As this argument is obviously of interest I decided that it would be of some value to trawl through the claims and data on this subject and see if we can get to the heart of the issue.

To do this I decided to manually go through all the winners of the Nobel prize and identify their ethnic origin (as far as that could be ascertained) and specifically in relation to counting the number of jewish winners I used a maximalist methodology.

This maximalist methodology worked on the principle that if I could find a jewish ancestor or mention of any jewish ancestry from a reputable source: I would count the individual concerned as a jew. I consider this to be more than equitable approach to doing so as I myself regard this as the defining factor of jewishness and it also increases the number of jewish Nobel Laureates to their maximum potential number. This then gives us the best possible situation for the number of jewish Nobel Laureates and also makes our answer to the question that much more definitive.

Manually recounting the number of instances of jewish Nobel Laureates was also undertaken because the figures that are offered for their total number wildly vary. For instance the Jewish Virtual Library lists 27 jewish chemistry winners, (3) while J-Info claims there are 33, (4) the Israel Science and Technology Homepage claims there are 31 and About's Judaism page asserts there were 23 (up to 2006). (5)

Recounting the figures allowed me to come up with fresh figures based; as stated, on a maximalist methodology and in doing so I also discovered some foul play in the figures.

For example take Christian Anfinsen who is included on some of these jewish Nobel Laureate lists as a winner of the Chemistry Nobel in 1972: however he wasn't born to a jewish family, but rather he converted to Judaism later in life and was actually from an American family of Norwegian origin. Given that these lists are routinely used; and even compiled, to make the implied or explicit claim that jews have something in their genetic make-up, which allows them to have superior brainpower to gentiles then Anfinsen shouldn't be included as jewish, but rather as a gentile!

From the above it is obvious that; as with Roth's modern popularization of this particular position, a lot of arguments that use this idea of the Nobel Prize as being representative of the jewish contribution to the world are often overtly being utilized for political ends. Indeed we can see just such a claim when we note that the Counter Jihadist (6) and the Zionist (7) movements in particular like to cite the number of jewish Nobel Laureates against the number of Muslim Nobel Laureates (8) as if this were a valid; as opposed to an 'apples versus oranges', comparison to make. (9)

In order to make this argument the best it can possibly be those who emphasize the number of occasions that jews have won a Nobel Prize do not actually use any defined criteria for what or who they define as jewish. Now as far as I can ascertain the 'logic' behind the inclusion or non-inclusion of an individual Nobel Laureate on the list as being jewish seems to be any information that would suggest that the individual concerned could be described as a jew.

If we examine two of the better researched and more accountable sources out there in the Jewish Virtual Library (10) and J-Info (9) lists respectively then we can begin to see the problem of compiling such a list of jewish Nobel Laureates as well as the misleading nature of claims about the number of jews who are Nobel Laureates.

To begin with the Jewish Virtual Library definition of 'jewishness' (12) is confused and contradictory in that it doesn't actually answer this notoriously tricky question, but rather it focuses on two separate issues in the religious definitions of jewishness and then how jewishness is defined by the secular Israeli state.

One of the basic problems with the article is that it over stresses the power of conversion to make a gentile a jew; hence its focus on the minority view in Reform Judaism (13) which does take this view (as well as Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism which the Jewish Virtual Library article oddly doesn't mention), (14) as well as the fact that it critically doesn't mention the inferior status that halakhic precedent sets and practical reality sets for a convert.

The article simply doesn't mention what a convert is regarded as in Judaism; which we should remember focuses primarily on matrilineal ancestry as its basic test in defining jewishness, that for the sake of completeness I now put right. In Judaism a convert is very simply a jewish (i.e. a pure) soul which has been born into a non-jewish (i.e. an impure) vessel (i.e. a gentile physical body): this obviously is hardly complimentary to those who are not considered to have been born jewish halakhically.

Further; as I have already indicated, the Jewish Virtual Library definition, presumes the fact that the Reform are the major jewish group, which is a misstatement. Since as Elazar has pointed out: (15) the Reform are not generally synagogue-attending jews, but rather many jews who do not regularly celebrate Shabbos or don't feel particularly strongly on the issue of religion consider themselves as Reform. Some jews to be sure do list themselves as non-denominational, but the key thing to understand is that like with Christianity in England: most of those who do not consider themselves as active atheists or have some vague deistic beliefs will consider themselves as being Anglican (or in the jewish case Reform) even though they may not have attended a Church (or synagogue) service in a decade or two.

A jew who is very active in their faith; and especially if they have a conservative intellectual slant, is likely however to see themselves as Orthodox given that Orthodoxy is by nature a traditional form of Judaism, while ultra-Orthodoxy represents the particularly stringent and often highly mystical Judaism of the shtetl. Reform on the other hand with its conscious aping of Christian church services (for example the inclusion of organ music in some synagogues) and selective rejection of the Oral Torah (the Talmuds) is a liberal faith as Julia Neuberger; a leading figure in Reform Judaism, has pointed out. (16)

Elazar summarizes the situation well when he states that:

'The significance of this cannot be overestimated. The primary assumption of most non-Orthodox is that the situation in the United States, where Orthodoxy is at most 11 percent of American Jewry and the vast majority of American Jews are non-Orthodox, is typical. But the American scene cannot be extracted from the world scene today, since most of the crucial decisions about religious life have worldwide impact, especially "Who is a Jew?" legislation in the Israeli Knesset, patrilineal descent decisions in the Reform movement, and other similar constitutional issues. The power of the Orthodox, then, is not the only power of a determined minority; it is the power that flows from real numerical strength vis-a-vis the other movements.

Even in the United States there has been a radical shift in the situation. In raw demographics, the Orthodox may represent a mere 10 percent, more or less, of the American Jewish community. The fact remains, however, that no more than 50 percent of American Jews are affiliated at any given time with any of the institutions of Jewish life, while the Orthodox are affiliated all the time. Therefore, at the very least they represent 20 percent of the affiliated. If one goes beyond affiliation to activism, it becomes clear that Orthodox Jews represent about a third of the total of Jewish activists within the American Jewish community, a community in which they are demographically the weakest.

These figures suggest that, as opposed to the popular image of a tiny embattled minority seeking to impose its will on the vast majority of world Jewry (the usual figures given are 15 percent versus 85 percent), Orthodox Judaism commands the allegiance of between 33 to 45 percent of all the Jews in the world and 50 to 70 percent of those who identify as religious in some way. Conversely, the non-Orthodox religious movements account for no more than one third of world Jewry and possibly as little as 25 percent. Hence, if Orthodox claims are strong, it is not only because they control all of the religious establishment outside of the United States by law or weight of tradition, but because they have the numerical strength to retain that control. It is no wonder, then, that Orthodoxy remains the dominant voice on the "Who is a Jew?" and other such issues and claims the lion's share of Jewish public money devoted to religious purposes.' (17)

If we understand this then we can see that the Jewish Virtual Library's definition of who is a jew is unrepresentative of the dynamics of the jewish religious community; where the reality is only hinted at in the article on the stringent Israeli guidelines (controlled by the Orthodox), for who is a jew and also how gentiles and gentile converts are viewed by the jewish community.

Indeed we can reasonably suggest that the Jewish Virtual Library's definition of who is a jew is problematic precisely because in addressing this question the author of the article concerned realised that they were necessarily going to have to skim over a lot of the positions taken by the powerful Orthodox community especially on the ideals they hold in and around jewish blood purity, because of the fact that non-jews are liable to read the Jewish Virtual Library and to take exception to being effectively called sub-humans.

However before we move on to look at the working definition of who is a jew used by J-Info in calculating their list: we should note one other major irregularity in the Jewish Virtual Library article. In so far as the article asserts that jewishness is always defined matrilineally: this is not strictly speaking true as jewishness can be passed along on another vector as well. In so far as if the mother of an individual is not jewish, but the father is a jew and is a Levite or member of the Kohanim (priestly class) then the jewishness is passed along patrilineally without respect to the matrilineal line. (18)

Thus accordingly we can see that; ironically, the Jewish Virtual Library's supposed logic about who is a jew is rather minimalist and as such their list should be shorter; not longer, than most others, which it is isn't.

Now when we turn to J-Info we note that the definitional ideas that underlie their calculation is more accurate when are told as follows:

'Concerning Jewish identity, the vast majority (over 90%) of the individuals listed here as being Jewish are such by virtue of having had two Jewish parents. Also included, however, are individuals with one Jewish parent, as well as a number of Jews-by-choice, with the listings of individuals in the latter two categories qualified as such. In adopting this criterion for inclusion, we have followed the practice employed by the Jewish encyclopedias for more than a century.' (19)

We can see; as stated above, that this definition is much better in so far as J-Info have stated they prefer to view a jew as someone born from a union of two jews, but also consider as jews those with one jewish parent as well as 'jews-by-choice' (i.e. converts to Judaism). Now aside from the fact that their claim that over 90 percent of those in their various listings have two jewish parents is rather unlikely in the best of situations: we should note their use of the phrase 'jews-by-choice' to describe converts to Judaism. This phrase suggests that the J-Info authors believe that jews are born not made or in other words that converts to Judaism aren't actually jews, but rather want to be jewish which they demonstrate by converting.

This is; of course, to all intents and purposes a biological definition of jewishness as it excludes the issue of religious confession and where it has anomalies; in the form of converts to Judaism, it treats them as outliers and specially marks them as such.

Now while this isn't as maximalist a definition as I have used in calculating my own figures for the number of jewish Nobel Laureates: it is fairly similar in some respect as I have included those with any known jewish heritage and excluded converts and J-Info have (allegedly) excluded any with jewish heritage beyond their immediate parents and included converts.

Now in order to compare the lists we will use three different individual examples to highlight the problem in compiling and also the accuracy of existing lists.

To begin with lets take the example of the first ever jewish winner:Alfred von Baeyer for Chemistry in 1905.

You could be excused for thinking that von Baeyer was born to jewish parents and worshipped in a synagogue his whole life. Von Baeyer however did not profess Judaism at all in his lifetime but rather was Christian whose mother (in this case a member of the famous Itzig dynasty) was a jewess converted to Christianity (by virtue of her parent's conversion). Indeed it was only after quite a lot of digging that I managed to confirm that von Baeyer actually did have a jewish mother as he isn't even listed in some specialist academic reference works as being of jewish extraction! (20)

If we look at the Jewish Virtual Library listing for von Baeyer (21) we note that it doesn't mention the fact only his mother was jewish by virtue of her parents and was actually an active Christian religiously and that Judaism wasn't passed down to von Baeyer (the article concerned makes no mention of von Baeyer's Christianity leaving the reader to assume he was an active worshiper of Judaism). This would mean that according to the Jewish Virtual Library's definition of who is jewish then von Baeyer would not be considered one precisely because his mother was born to jewish parents, but she was not herself jewish by confession.

Now while halakha would; rightly, consider von Baeyer jewish that is largely irrelevant, because the Jewish Virtual Library has used a religious confession-centred definition (i.e. used by Reform jews) as opposed to one that the would take into account the halakhic rulings on the irrespective transmission of jewishness (i.e. used by Orthodox jews). However interestingly the Jewish Virtual Library still includes him in spite of loudly professing to not follow the biologically-based traditions of Orthodox!

J-Info conversely is quite logical here as they clearly label von Baeyer as having a non-jewish father and a jewish mother, (22) which by their own (quasi-biological) definition would be correct: although tenuous given the conversion of von Baeyer's maternal grandparents to Christianity. J-Info would really have to qualify exactly at what point the parent becomes non-jewish or jewish in their view upon conversion or whether halakha overrides that and if the latter is the case then they would need to explain why jewishness cannot; in their view, be transmitted from more distant ancestors.

Now we can already see by taking the example of von Baeyer that jewish definitions of just who is jewish in relation to Nobel Laureates really come apart when we look at examples.

Another illustrative case can be found in the personage of Otto Wallach who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1910. Wallach is the converse case to von Baeyer in that rather than his mother being from a family of jewish converts to Protestantism: his father was, but his mother was a German. (23) One source incorrectly claims he was a follower of Judaism, (24) but this is not the case as he was a follower of Christianity (per his father and mother).

Now the Jewish Virtual Library article doesn't mention the above background at all and again cites him as being jewish in spite of the fact that his father was from a family of jewish converts and that his mother was from a gentile family with no known jewish lineage at all!

Clearly then according to the Jewish Virtual Library's definition of jewishness: Otto Wallach cannot be a jew, because he doesn't have a jewish mother and he wasn't a professing jew. That however doesn't stop the Jewish Virtual Library including him as one of their jewish Nobel Laureates!

The J-Info list once again is on stronger ground in describing Wallach as a jew given that their usage of a quasi-biological definition of jewishness; albeit based on whether a parent could be considered jewish, however we once again face the considerable problem of whether or not the J-Info authors would consider Otto Wallach's father jewish considering he came from a family of known jewish converts as opposed to being a self-identified jew per se.

We can clearly see that as with von Baeyer: the case for Wallach's jewishness according to the Jewish Virtual Library's definition is non-existent, while for J-Info it is borderline. Neither list makes themselves very clear: in part we can reasonably speculate so they can include as many part-jews as jews as humanly possible in order to maximize the numbers on their respective lists.

An example of yet another problem for these two lists found among jewish Nobel Laureate can be located in the personage of Albert Abraham Michelson and his Nobel Prize for Physics in 1907. Now Michelson poses the opposite problem for both lists as both his parents were jews (although his mother is contested), (25) but both of them were political radicals and atheists, while Michelson was a life-long agnostic. (26)

Now the Jewish Virtual Library once again doesn't include any of this information on Michelson (26) and simply lists him as a jewish. This is in spite of the fact that his father and mother would not be considered jewish by the definition they have used to compile their list of jewish Nobel Laureates, because they were both non-practising and further explicitly rejected their religious heritage. This means of course that Michelson's mother couldn't be considered as jewish and this would mean in the Jewish Virtual Library's definition that neither could Michelson be considered as such.

However once again this doesn't stop the Jewish Virtual Library including Michelson as a jew!

J-Info by contrast is again on much stronger ground here (27) as they contend that if either parent can be considered as having been jewish (although again just what the deciding criteria are and the reach of said criteria is depends on how strong the case for Michelson's inclusion would be) then their offspring should be considered to be jewish. This would mean that Michelson would probably be considered to be jewish by J-Info's authors subject to the definitional caveats pointed out above.

We can thus see the importance of the definition of just who is jewish to these lists, because by taking three different examples of individuals included on both the Jewish Virtual Library and J-Info's jewish Nobel Laureate lists. We have shown that we can easily contest the jewishness of all three individuals according to the definitions that both lists have stated that they are using to assign jewishness to an individual.

Now the fact that in spite of the inconsistency involved both lists have included dubious individuals as being definitively jewish (without qualification on the Jewish Virtual Library and with qualification on J-Info), which then informs us that these lists must; as above asserted, be problematic precisely because they are actually using a maximalist methodology of assigning as jews those who do not fit their own definition of jewishness, while in one case professing to use a minimalist methodology in the other using a potentially maximalist methodology, but based on incomplete methodological premises.

This problem that has now been explained in detail was part of why the present author took the trouble to manually recount all the instances of jewish Nobel Laureates using a biological definition of jewishness and assuming any known jewish ancestry at all made an individual Nobel Laureate jewish.

This lack of manual recounting and re-identification of the jewish Nobel Laureates on a maximalist methodology is the weakness of a recent critical paper on the subject of jewish Nobel Laureates by Jan Biro, (29) as his numbers are taken from the J-Info figures and he has not checked the background to some of these claims of jewishness (or noted the inclusion of converts such as Alfinsen).


References

(1) In his Cecil Roth, 1938, 'The Jewish Contribution to Civilization', 1st Edition, MacMillan: London, which quickly became a best-seller being reissued dozens of times under different imprints and in new editions since that time.
(2) Elliot Horowitz, 2007, 'Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence', 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 169-170
(3) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... obels.html
(4) http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html
(5) http://www.science.co.il/Nobel-Chemistry.asp
(6) For example: http://europenews.dk/en/node/13583; I have addressed this list in the following article http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.co ... prize.html.
(7) For example: http://www.thejidf.org/2010/01/jewish-n ... lamic.html; I have addressed this list in the following article http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.co ... -cant.html.
(8) For example: http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2006/0 ... rizes.html
(9) I have discussed this at length in the following article: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.co ... prize.html.
(10) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... obels.html
(11) http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html
(12) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ojew1.html
(13) Daniel Elazar, 1991, 'How Strong is Orthodox Judaism – Really?: The Demographics of Jewish Identification', Jewish Action, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 62-64
(14) The reason for this seems to be that large sections of the article concerned were; the author of article concerned openly admits, cobbled together from About.com's Judaism 101 page as opposed to being a proper exposition in its own right.
(15) Elazar, Op. Cit., p. 64
(16) Julia Neuberger, 1996, 'On Being Jewish', 1st Edition, Mandarin: Melbourne, p. 161
(17) Elazar, Op. Cit., p. 64
(18) The basis for this is in the figure of Ruth the Moabitess (i.e. a gentile) who married the jew Boaz and who was; in Biblical tradition, the great grandmother of King David (i.e. as Boaz was of the priestly class in Rabbinic tradition then his jewishness had to be transmitted patrilineally in order to make King David jewish).
(19) http://www.jinfo.org/
(20) For example Geoffrey Wigoder, 1991, 'Dictionary of Jewish Biography', 1st Edition, Simon and Schuster: New York (von Baeyer does not appear and if he did then would be listed on pp. 50-51). His mother's maiden name Hitzig isn't a jewish surname either (not listed by Benzion Kaganoff, 1978, 'A Dictionary of Jewish Names and their History', 1st Edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul: London), but I discovered that her father had changed his surname from Itzig to Hitzig upon his conversion to Christianity.
(21) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... aeyer.html
(22) http://www.jinfo.org/Nobels_Chemistry.html (n. 1)
(23) Wallach isn't identified as jewish in Wigoder, Op. Cit., p. 541 (where his entry should be); http://www.nndb.com/people/215/000099915/ incorrectly identifies him as religious jewish but doesn't tell us that he was not a follower of Judaism but rather Christianity.
(24) Ibid.
(25) Doubt as to Michelson's mother being jewish has been expressed by Dorothy Livingston, 1973, 'The Master of Light: A Biography of Albert A. Michelson', 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, p. 12; however the J-Info claim (http://www.jinfo.org/Nobels_Physics.html, n. 1) that his mother's surname was jewish is only selectively backed up by the sources as Kaganoff, Op. Cit., p. 187 doesn't list it as a jewish surname.
(26) Ibid, pp. 12-15; 106-107
(27) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... elson.html
(28) http://www.jinfo.org/Nobels_Physics.html (n. 1)
(29) http://www.janbiro.com/THE_JEWISH_BIAS_ ... _PRIZE.pdf

[Reinhard]

Jews and the Nobel Prize: Fantasy versus Fact (Part II)

Karl Radl


Now we have demonstrated the problem of compiling lists of jewish Nobel Laureates in that their intellectual credibility is almost wholly based on just who and what they define as jewish, which; as I have said, puts advocates of jewish causes (for which these lists are frequently used) in something of a quandary. This is because they want to include as many potential Nobel Laureates as jews. Yet they do not wish to explicitly define jewishness as being biological in nature, (30) because to do would; to all intents and purposes, concede that anti-Semites have been right for over a century and the jews have been misrepresenting themselves for an even greater length of time.

Having dealt with this background we can confidently move on to the other key issue in understanding these figures in what the Nobel Prize represents and what it does not represent. As in order for us to draw a firm conclusion about significant over-representation (which is what the jews allege there is): we must understand what we are measuring.

This particular point has only been substantially noticed by Biro in part because; as he rightly stresses, the Nobel Prize has become seen by many scientists (and indeed the general public) as the paragon of scientific achievement and as such a list of those who have especially contributed to furthering the knowledge base of humanity writ large. (31)

Now; as Biro argues, there is a substantial gap between what we can say the Nobel Prizes represent to the wider population and what they can be actually held as evidence of. The Nobel Prize may be held as being an intellectual laurel of the highest order, but yet we need to understand that it is fundamentally a subjective opinion of a committee based on a necessarily imperfect knowledge of the totality of the scientific and academic literature.

Why do I say an imperfect knowledge?

Well if we but stop to think about it: there are several major languages on earth; let alone hundreds of smaller ones, in which scientific and academic literature and advances can be written in. Now as far as I am aware there is no rule which says that Nobel Prize judges must be conversant in at least all of the major academic languages (which would necessarily include Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Hebrew and Arabic all of which additionally use different character sets to Western European languages). This necessarily means that work in languages other than the standard European ones (i.e. English, German, Spanish and French) is at a significant disadvantage to begin with unless it has been translated into or had significant mention of it in the those major European languages.

Accordingly if for any reason your work; as for example a Japanese scientist, isn't picked up by English speaking science (for example) then you don't have much chance of it being selected as a candidate for a Nobel Prize: irrespective of how 'beneficial' it may have been perceived to have been had the judges been able to read what you had written.

This language barrier is noticeable among Nobel Laureates in part due to the sheer lack of non-European language (outside of Russians whose scientists and academics did contribute to Western academic publications in the Cold War and vice versa) speakers until relatively recently with an increasing number of Japanese and Israeli winners in recent years. However we should note that this confirms the point under consideration in so far as the Japanese and Israelis both have significant amounts of popular literacy in the English language, which would thus mean that like Russians: they would be able to contribute work to publications and publishing houses in languages which are far more likely to be read and understood by the Nobel Prize committee than those nationalities without comparable levels of popular literacy in the English language.

We should note with particular interest that the relatively large number of Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian winners of the Nobel Prize will have also benefited substantially from a linguistic advantage given that as they are in close geographical, linguistic and cultural proximity to each other: their contributions; which might otherwise have gone unnoticed, have been considered significant enough to merit numerous Nobel Laureates precisely because the Swedish committee is far more likely to know of their work than the work of a scientist in Beijing or Tokyo.

Once we have understood this we can also bring out a further point; which has been missed by the literature, in so far as jews have; as a rule of a thumb, a significant linguistic advantage when compared to most other peoples. In so far as jewish culture has a long tradition; encouraged by the fact of the Diaspora, of multilingualism.

This has been reinforced by the creation of jewish languages based on a combination of Hebrew and another language (the best known of these are German [Yiddish] and Spanish [Ladino]), which has allowed jews brought up with fluency in these combination languages to attain further fluency in both Hebrew and the other language (i.e. most frequently German) in addition to the obvious desirability of attaining fluency in the modern lingua franca: English.

It just so happens that all these languages are those that the Nobel Committee are more likely to have knowledge of academic work in and accordingly it gives jews a considerable competitive advantage in gaining the attention of and potential interest in their work from the selection process for Nobel Laureates.

Indeed if we note that Israeli Nobel Laureates have only begun to win Nobel Prizes really since the millennium then we can see that we cannot attribute jewish success to simply a high IQ; although the overwhelming number of jewish as well as Israeli Nobel Laureates are Ashkenazim as opposed to Sephardim and Mizrahim, as the IQ of the Ashkenazim in Israel is still 103 (as opposed to the Diaspora average of 115) (32) which would not account for why; for example the Swiss (IQ 101) and the Danish (IQ 98), (33) have won the Nobel Prize significantly more times than Israelis have even though they have a similar IQ.

If; as we may reasonably suggest, language and the lack of perfect knowledge of the state of science is key to a group attaining Nobel Prize winners. Then we can quickly begin to see that the idea that the Nobel Prizes are an objective statement of scientific merit and/or contribution to humanity quickly begins to fall apart. Precisely because then we can accordingly see that the Nobel Prize is awarded not to the most significant contribution, but rather to the contribution that fits the intellectual opinions and interests of the majority of the committee.

This then leaves us with what Biro ably argues to be the subjective bias of the Nobel Prize committees in that they are not focusing so much on the scientific merit, novelty or total contribution of one piece of research, but rather on their own scientific interests and opinions. (34)

Biro further develops this argument by referring to the foundation document of the Nobel Prize; the will of Alfred Nobel, which explicitly states as follows:

'The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical works by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.' (35)

Now clearly Nobel's will on this point is utterly subjective in that it presumes; as was common in Nobel's day, the impartiality of true science and the scientific method whereby it is therefore easy for a committee of leading Swedish scientists to be able to pick out one or more outstanding contributors to their individual subject. However since the establishment of the Nobel Prize: the generalized disciplines that Nobel sought to award prizes to; Chemistry, Physics and Medicine, have profoundly altered with the advent of many disciplines and sub-disciplines that use many different strands of science together such as Biophysics and Biochemistry.

Further these disciplines have themselves broken down even further with the ever increasing specialization of knowledge and the advent of computers and near instantaneous communication; all unimaginable in Nobel's day, then the very broad fields of science in which the Nobel Prize is awarded are simply unworkable precisely because the production of scientific literature and theories have outstripped the capacity of even the best minds to keep abreast of the latest ideas and materials.

This then obviously necessitates the conclusion that the Nobel Prizes today are not really in keeping with Alfred Nobel's will given that Nobel believed in an objective valuation of the worth of a scientific discovery where-as the inability of the Swedish Academy of science or the Karolinska Institute to know of most; let alone every, theory and advance and objectively weigh them (as it simply isn't humanly possible) leads them to necessarily make a subjective and intellectual fashion driven judgement of scientific value.

Indeed it wouldn't take too much imagination to see that if one or more of the scholars that are selected by the Nobel Committees do have strong opinions then it is very likely to significantly sway the voting.

This is obvious when we understand that to get a Nobel Prize you have to be nominated by confidential ballot. (36) Those who submit names by this method are those considered by the awarding institution to be qualified to do so and further the nominated party is dependent wholly on the opinion of the awarding institution's representatives: meaning in effect that as long as you get a significant amount of votes and your research is fairly well known then you are quite likely to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

This means then; to summarize, that the Nobel Prize is not an objective award of scientific achievement; as popularly believed, but rather reflects the opinions of a small number of scientists who award the prize to the research that they think has most significantly moved science forward. This then means that the Nobel Prize is not a measure of ability or even achievement, but rather is an award by a group of scientists to other scientists based on their opinion of said scientists perceived and/or real contribution, which as Biro has correctly identified can easily have much more to do with their own scientific interests and current intellectual fashions as opposed to achievement or contribution. (37)

This is rather more obvious in the case of the Nobel Prize for Literature as clearly there is and can be no objective standard for a 'contribution to literature' (or even why this advances mankind in the slightest), but rather it is simply the opinion of the Nobel Committee. It is rather like suggesting that the Pulitzer Prize always selects ground-breaking or intellectually sound works as it doesn't, but yet the air of the authority of it being an intellectual prize selected by a learned committee suggests to most that there is a kind of objectivity in the selection process which; ironically, simply cannot actually exist in anything other than fantasy.

In the case of the Peace Prize: I consider it self-evident that it is something that is completely subjective and based on intellectual fashions of the moment rather than any objective judgement as Nobel's will maintains it should be. After all who do we suggest has helped make the world a more peaceful place?

Those who innovate non-lethal weapons, mental health professionals, those who innovate defensive martial arts or do you award it to diplomats and organisations who have (often temporarily) stopped one conflict perhaps?

The Peace Prize has chosen to do the latter for most of its existence and this demonstrates that the Peace Prize is a rather meaningless award given to the diplomatic heroes of the moment rather than those who actually work towards and seek to bring about peace on a far more hazardous and local level.

This then tells us that the Nobel Prize cannot be used as jews and their supporters try to use them to suggest that the incontestably large number of jewish Nobel Laureates is indicative of jewish ability, achievement and.or contribution: as all it indicates are the opinions of a few scientists who on balance probably did not make an objective qualification. This is easily demonstrated by asking rhetorically why jews fail to mention that at least 21 Nobel Laureates (38) actively supported or directly worked with the Third Reich?

If a government that only last 12 years attracted the support of so many then current and future Nobel Laureates: then surely it should be; by the same token as the jewish Nobel Laureate lists being representative of jewish ability, achievement and excellence, that National Socialism also encourages disproportionate levels of achievement.


References

(30) Salter; for example, has stressed that the jews are a biologically rather homogeneous group in spite of having been a minority across their countries of residence for nearly two millennia (Frank Salter, 2007, 'On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration', 2nd Edition, Transaction: New Brunswick, pp. 102-103)
(31) Biro, Op. Cit., pp. 2; 6-7
(32) Richard Lynn, 2006, 'Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis', 1st Edition, Washington Summit: Augusta, pp. 94-95
(33) Ibid, pp. 173-174
(34) Biro, Op. Cit., p. 2
(35) http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/ ... mente.html
(36) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... index.html
(37) Biro, Op. Cit, pp. 8-9
(38) None of whom won the Nobel Peace Prize and most of whom won awards in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine.

[Reinhard]

Jews and the Nobel Prize: Fantasy versus Fact (Part III)

Karl Radl


Now that we have discussed both the problem of how the lists of jewish Nobel Laureates are compiled and the mismatch between what the lists of jewish Nobel Laureates are being used to evidence against what they actually do evidence. We can finally begin looking at the actual numbers of jewish and non-jewish Nobel Laureates and place these figures in their appropriate context.

My own manual recount on maximalist methodological lines noted the following number of major national groups of Nobel Laureates (39) compared with the total number of Nobel Laureates for each prize, (40) which I have then; for ease of reference, converted to a percentage of prizes won by those of jewish and European descent.


Physics

Jewish: 46
Israeli: 0
German: 25
Dutch: 9
British: 19
French: 6
American: 42
Canadian: 3
Japanese: 7
Swiss: 3
Swedish: 4
Danish: 1
Norwegian: 1
Austrian: 1

Total Jews: 46
Total Europeans: 133
Total Nobels Awarded: 194
Percentage of Jews: 23.7%
Percentage of Europeans: 68.6%


Chemistry

Jewish: 29
Israeli: 4
German: 24
Dutch: 3
British: 22
French: 6
American: 39
Canadian: 1
Japanese: 7
Swiss: 4
Swedish: 4
Danish: 1
Norwegian: 2
Austrian: 2

Total Jewish Laureates: 33
Total European Laureates: 116
Total Nobels Awarded: 163
Percentage of Jews: 20.2%
Percentage of Europeans: 71.2%


Medicine

Jewish: 44
Israeli: 0
German: 15
Dutch: 3
British: 27
French: 11
American: 43
Canadian: 2
Japanese: 2
Swiss: 6
Swedish: 7
Danish: 5
Norwegian: 0
Austrian: 3

Total Jewish Laureates: 44
Total European Laureates: 153
Total Nobels Awarded: 201
Percentage of Jews: 21.9%
Percentage of Europeans: 76.1%


Literature

Jewish: 13
Israeli: 0
German: 8
Dutch: 0
British: 7
French: 12
American: 8
Canadian: 0
Japanese: 2
Swiss: 0
Swedish: 7
Danish: 4
Norwegian: 3
Austrian: 0

Total Jewish Laureates: 13
Total European Laureates: 83
Total Nobels Awarded: 109
Percentage of Jews: 11.9%
Percentage of Europeans: 76.1%


Peace

Jewish: 6
Israeli: 3
German: 5
Dutch: 0
British: 7
French: 7
American: 18
Canadian: 1
Japanese: 1
Swiss: 3
Swedish: 5
Danish: 1
Norwegian: 2
Austrian: 1

Total Jewish Laureates: 9
Total European Laureates: 68
Total Nobels Awarded: 101
Percentage of Jews: 8.9%
Percentage of Europeans: 67.3%


Economics

Jewish: 27
Israeli: 2
German: 0
Dutch: 2
British: 7
French: 2
American: 19
Canadian: 2
Japanese: 0
Swiss: 0
Swedish: 2
Danish: 0
Norwegian: 3
Austrian: 1

Total Jewish Laureates: 29
Total European Laureates: 41
Total Nobels Awarded: 71
Percentage of Jews: 40.8%
Percentage of Europeans: 57.7%

What I have done in the above is to focus on the methodological strategy used by jews to maximize the number of those they can call jewish (which I have described and analysed in some detail above) and transliterated this methodological strategy onto those of European descent. Now the reasoning behind doing this is very simply that because we are supposed to be using the number of jews who have won the Nobel Prize regardless of their country of origin, which naturally; as above described, maximizes the number of jewish Nobel Laureates.

Then in order to compare like-to-like we must necessarily take the number of non-jewish Nobel Laureates of European descent regardless of country of origin. As only this number can be said to be comparative to taking the jewish Diaspora into account as being exclusively jewish as the lists invariably do. This effectively means we must compare the number of Nobel Laureates from the biological jewish Diaspora against the number of winners from the biological European Diaspora.

Now as the reader will quickly realise the absolute numbers used by the Jewish Virtual Library and the J-Info lists may look good on the surface, but once you compare them against the number of European Nobel Laureates: it is quickly apparent that the jewish Nobel Laureates are normally about 3 times less than European Nobel Laureates.

The exceptions to this rule of thumb are ironically the two most subjective Nobel Prizes; Literature and Peace. where Europeans have outperformed jews by a factor of 7. In addition to the Nobel Prize for Economics (which remember was only added in 1969 and thus suffers from a comparatively low amount of total prize winners driving up the percentages) where the European superiority is only about 0.5 times.

The compilers of the Jewish Virtual Library and J-Info lists however have already conceived of their excuses for the manifest superiority of Nobel Laureates of European descent compared to those of jewish descent. This they do by invoking a common jewish; as well as Zionist, trope (which can be traced back to Cecil Roth et al) about the small number of jews in and their disproportionate contribution to the world. (41)

The argument made is very simple in that both the Jewish Virtual Library and J-Info lists make particular reference to the significant difference in the number of jews who have won the Nobel Prize when compared to another country of origin. With the implicit assumption that every individual of jewish descent; regardless of religious confession or personal views, is a representative of the jewish people and therefore part of the jewish nation.

This is all well and good until they begin comparing this nation spread across the world with particular countries; notably the United States, in order to suggest that the jewish contribution has been massively disproportionate and that this accordingly means there is 'something special' about the jews.

This; as we have already discussed, is a deliberately disingenuous comparison to make given that the jews are here comparing a quasi-biological group spread among dozens of countries against one particular country of European descent. Hardly a valid comparison now is it?

To give some examples of what this false comparison does statistically I have produced Nobel Laureates per Median Population figures for several countries plus the jewish Diaspora and Israel.

Total Laureates

Jewish: 0.00001
Israeli: 0.000002
German: 0.000001
Dutch: 0.000002
British: 0.000002
French: 0.000001
American: 0.000001
Canadian: 0.0000005
Swiss: 0.000003
Swedish: 0.000004
Danish: 0.000003
Norwegian: 0.000003

Physics/Chemistry/Medicine Laureates

Jewish: 0.00001
Israeli: 0.0000009
German: 0.0000009
Dutch: 0.000001
British: 0.000001
French: 0.0000005
American: 0.0000006
Canadian: 0.0000003
Swiss: 0.000002
Swedish: 0.000002
Danish: 0.000002
Norwegian: 0.0000008

From this; and I appreciate there are a lot of zeros in said numbers, we can immediately see a pattern developing. In that those countries with small historical populations but yet corresponding high numbers of Nobel Laureates like Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway seem to; like the jews, be outperforming countries with significantly larger amounts of Nobel Laureates but also larger populations.

We can see this in the fact that Israel is one of these countries in that it significantly underperforms when compared to the jewish Diaspora and small European countries, but yet outperforms larger European countries with many more Nobel Laureates. The cause of this numerical oddity is fairly obvious in that what we are dealing with a statistical trick in so far as the size of the relative populations governs the proportionality of the amount of winners.

When we further recall that these Nobel Prizes have not been awarded over 1 year but rather 112 years, which means we have to contend with population changes, this then gives us a truer sense of the proportionality of the Nobel Laureates against the historical population.

Once we factor in population changes over this 112 year period then the figures change remarkably:

Total Laureates

Jewish: 0.000004
Israeli: 0.00002
German: 0.0000009
Dutch: 0.000005
British: 0.000004
French: 0.0000004
American: 0.000004
Canadian: 0.000003
Swiss: 0.000007
Swedish: 0.000008
Danish: 0.000006
Norwegian: 0.000008

Physics/Chemistry/Medicine Laureates

Jewish: 0.000003
Israeli: 0.000007
German: 0.0000008
Dutch: 0.000004
British: 0.000003
French: 0.0000002
American: 0.000003
Canadian: 0.000002
Swiss: 0.000006
Swedish: 0.000004
Danish: 0.000004
Norwegian: 0.0000002

We can thus see that when we factor in historic growth the contribution of the jewish Diaspora evaporates substantially and in fact is shown to be no more; and in many cases significantly less, than individual countries of European descent such as Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland.

The statistical wild card in the pack is Israel and we may discount Israel's figures due to the unique nature of Israeli history and the fact that Israeli demographics have a sharp upward curve due to the colonization of Palestine by jews originally from the Diaspora. This means in effect that Israel has a false reading due to its very large population growth due to Diaspora immigration and not because of the number of jews significantly increasing globally.

This then nicely brings us to why the jewish figures have suddenly decreased as a proportional contribution against population. This is because the jewish population has not substantially increased but has largely stayed the same, (42) while many European populations have seen explosive population growth between 1901 and 2012. This means that the original statistics that are the necessary basis of the claim of jewish over-representation are in fact incorrect because they do not factor into their calculations the amount of time the Nobel Prizes have been awarded.

To summarise then: the jews are not comparably over-represented in the number of Nobel Prizes they have awarded when compared to both individual European countries and the wider Diaspora of those of European descent. In fact if anything the jews; relative to their population, are under-represented in the number of Nobel Prizes that they have been awarded even when compared to countries of European descent with much larger relative populations such as Canada.

We may draw attention once again to the linguistic issue whereby a close geographical, cultural and linguistic proximity to Sweden is clearly an element to consider in the amount of Nobel Laureates awarded and jews have taken advantage of their culture of multilingualism in order to win a large amount of Nobels, but not relative to their population when considered over the 112 year existence of the Nobel Prizes.

Indeed we should also point out that the statistics that have been drawn out from this manual re-count of the Nobel Laureates has confirmed Biro's assertion that the Nobel Prizes are not an objective measure of an individual's contribution, ability or innovation, but are rather based on a very subjective and controversial body of opinion that prefers scientists with which it is more familiar (due to less linguistic, cultural and geographical boundaries) than those scientists with whom there is less familiarity with due to increased linguistic, cultural and geographical barriers.

This then leads us to conclude that the argument that the jews have disproportionately won the Nobel Prize is false as it is highly misleading and does not take into account factors such as the length of time the Nobel Prize has been extant nor the relative contributions of those of jewish descent against those of European descent. As well as the fact that these lists of jewish Nobel Laureates are frequently compiled on a methodology which contradicts the explicit definitions given in these lists and are then falsely compared against European countries as opposed to the European Diaspora.

This to all intents and purposes means that the jews are not disproportionately represented among the Nobel Laureates.


References

(39) This was compiled by using an Microsoft Excel Database to cross-check and analyse the statistics and is available only on direct application to the author.
(40) Taken from: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... facts.html
(41) http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html; http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... obels.html
(42) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ldpop.html