Russian Nobel Prize Laureates
In my previous articles on Nobel Prize winners I pointed out that there are few Muslim Nobel Prize Laureates (only three) because Islam does not encourage intellectual pursuits.
When a number of readers questioned me about the great contributions of Arabs during Europe's Dark Ages, I responded that it was Islam that killed the great period of Arabian learning and that nothing has come out of Arabia for the past one thousand years. Not because so many Arabs are genetically inferior, but because so many Arabs are Muslim.
One reader wrote, "The paucity of Arabic Nobel laureates is also not evidence for any apparent fault of Islam, even if it has short-comings (and what religion or culture doesn't). If it were, perhaps one could argue that the Chinese are stupid, given that they too have won so few Nobel prizes (around 6) compared with their population (1 billion)."
I answered, "What holds Muslims back in creativity by Islam is the same mechanism that keeps native Chinese from winning Nobel Prizes as well." In fact, 5 out 6 of the Chinese Nobel Prize winners were actually Chinese-Americans.
The Soviet Union has certainly encouraged scientific learning during the last century yet has garnered only 16 Nobel Science Prizes. I have omitted Nobel Peace Prize winners from the following list since they have contributed practically nothing of value to modern civilization. The following Nobel winners were either born in Russia or grew up there; however, it is interesting to note how many are in fact Jews.
Clicking on highlighted name will jump to a biography article on the Laureate.
Physics (10)
| Laureate | Year | Nationality | Awarded Country | Birthplace |
| Alexei A. Abrikosov | 2003 | Russian Jew | USA & Russia | Moscow |
| Vitaly Ginzburg | 2003 | Russian Jew | Russia | Moscow |
| Zhores I. Alferov | 2000 | Belarusian-Jew | Russia | Vitebsk-Belarus |
| Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa | 1978 | Polish-Russian | Soviet Union | Kronstadt-USSR |
| Nicolay G. Basov | 1964 | Russian | Soviet Union | Usman-USSR |
| Aleksandr M. Prokhorov | 1964 | Russian | Soviet Union | Atherton-Australia |
| Lev Landau | 1962 | Russian Jew | Soviet Union | Baku-Azerbaijan |
| Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov | 1958 | Russian | Soviet Union | Novaya Chigla-Russia |
| Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm | 1958 | Russian Jew | Soviet Union | Vladivostok-Russia |
| Ilya Mikhailovich Frank | 1958 | Russian Jew | Soviet Union | Leningrad-Russia |
Chemistry (2)
| Laureate | Year | Nationality | Awarded Country | Birthplace |
| Ilya Prigogine | 1977 | Russian Jew | Belgium | Moscow |
| Nikolay Semyonov | 1956 | Russian | Soviet Union | Saratov-Russia |
Medicine (2)
| Laureate | Year | Nationality | Awarded Country | Birthplace |
| Ilya Mechnikov | 1908 | Russian Jew | Russia | Kharkov-Ukraine |
| Ivan Pavlov | 1904 | Russian | Russia | Ryazan-Russia |
Economics (2)
| Laureate | Year | Nationality | Awarded Country | Birthplace |
| Leonid Hurwicz | 2007 | Polish Jew | USA | Moscow |
| Leonid Kantorovich | 1975 | Russian Jew | Soviet Union | Saint Petersburg-Russia |
If you are keeping track, out of 16 Russian Nobel Science Prize Winners, 10 are Jews.
What about Russians winning the Nobel Prize for Literature?
- Ivan Bunin, Literature, 1933
- Boris Pasternak, Literature, 1958 (Jew)
Boris Pasternak was born into a prominent Jewish family in Moscow, where his father, Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, was a professor at the Moscow School of Painting. His mother, Rosa Kaufman, was an acclaimed concert pianist. Their home was open to such guests as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Tolstoy Biography: Jewish Virtual Library. - Michail Sholokhov, Literature, 1965
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Literature, 1970
- Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky, Literature, 1987 (Jew)
At an interview in Stockholm airport, to the question: "You are an American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry. Who are you, an American or a Russian?", he responded: "I am Jewish - a Russian poet and an English essayist". Biography: Jewish Virtual Library.
Two Jews out of five; not shabby.
Out of 21 Russian Nobel Prizes given out, Jews garnered 12, or about 57%. So when you hear Russian anti-Semites blaming Jews for their country's economic troubles, you can point out that if it weren't for Jews, Russia would have fewer Nobel Laureates than tiny Poland.
Disclaimer: Jews are not any smarter racially or genetically than anyone else although they do score higher in IQ tests than almost anyone else (1) and they proportionately win more scientific prizes than any other ethnic or racial group. I attribute this solely to Jewish upbringing which stresses education and scholarly pursuits. We are all human beings of the same species. By looking at the Jewish winners of Nobel Prizes, we see that it doesn't matter where you are born, the essential ingredient in intellectual achievement is how you are brought up. Russian Jews win more Nobel Prizes than Russian non-Jews because the stultifying nature of Soviet culture has less influence in their lives.
Take any Russian gentile or Arab Muslim and bring him up Jewish and I have no doubt that he'll be more likely to win a Nobel Prize than otherwise.
ENDNOTES
(1):
Planck's Constant, The Problem with IQ
... South East Asians 85-90, Africans 80-85, Arabs 83, Latinos 85-90 (Full blooded American Indians even lower).
... Asians(Oriental: China, Japan, Korea etc.) 104, Europeans 100(plus a couple points maybe), Russians(who've gone through a huge amount of internal strife themselves) 96, Americans 100.
Jews and Asians... score the highest on IQ tests (110 and 104 respectively).
