Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, often referred to as "Jewish genius", [1] [2] [3] [4] is a subject that explores the perception that Ashkenazi Jews tend to have a higher intelligence than all other ethnic groups and excel disproportionately in many fields and has been an occasional subject of scientific controversy.
The average IQ score of Ashkenazi Jews has been calculated to be from a range of 108–115 under some studies, which would be significantly higher than that of any other ethnic group in the world. [5] [6] [7]
A 2005 paper by three authors who have been linked to theories described as "scientific racism," [8] "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" [9] proposed that Ashkenazi Jews as a group inherit higher verbal and mathematical intelligence the basis of inherited diseases and the peculiar economic situation of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages.
Ashkenazi Jews have had success in a variety of academic fields disproportionate to their small population size, including science, technology, politics, and law. For instance, Ashkenazi Jews have won more than one quarter of Fields Medals, Turing Awards, and Regeneron Science Talent Search awards. People of Ashkenazi Jewish descent are also disproportionately represented among world chess champions (54 percent), National Medal of Science recipients (37 percent), U.S. Nobel Prize winners (29 percent), [9] and Nobel laureates in medicine or physiology (42 percent). Furthermore, Jews comprise up to one third of the student populace at Ivy League schools and 30 percent of U.S. Supreme Court law clerks.
Assuming that there is a statistical difference in intelligence between Ashkenazi Jews and other ethnic groups, there still remains the question of how much of the difference is caused by genetic factors. [10]
"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence", a 2005 paper by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending, put forth the conjecture that the unique conditions under which Ashkenazi Jews lived in medieval Europe selected for high verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial intelligence. Their paper has four main premises:
Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, often referred to as "Jewish genius", [1] [2] [3] [4] is a subject that explores the perception that Ashkenazi Jews tend to have a higher intelligence than all other ethnic groups and excel disproportionately in many fields and has been an occasional subject of scientific controversy.
The average IQ score of Ashkenazi Jews has been calculated to be from a range of 108–115 under some studies, which would be significantly higher than that of any other ethnic group in the world. [5] [6] [7]
A 2005 paper by three authors who have been linked to theories described as "scientific racism," [8] "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" [9] proposed that Ashkenazi Jews as a group inherit higher verbal and mathematical intelligence the basis of inherited diseases and the peculiar economic situation of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages.
Ashkenazi Jews have had success in a variety of academic fields disproportionate to their small population size, including science, technology, politics, and law. For instance, Ashkenazi Jews have won more than one quarter of Fields Medals, Turing Awards, and Regeneron Science Talent Search awards. People of Ashkenazi Jewish descent are also disproportionately represented among world chess champions (54 percent), National Medal of Science recipients (37 percent), U.S. Nobel Prize winners (29 percent), [9] and Nobel laureates in medicine or physiology (42 percent). Furthermore, Jews comprise up to one third of the student populace at Ivy League schools and 30 percent of U.S. Supreme Court law clerks.
Assuming that there is a statistical difference in intelligence between Ashkenazi Jews and other ethnic groups, there still remains the question of how much of the difference is caused by genetic factors. [10]
"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence", a 2005 paper by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending, put forth the conjecture that the unique conditions under which Ashkenazi Jews lived in medieval Europe selected for high verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial intelligence. Their paper has four main premises: