Americans typically don’t realize how lucky they were that World War II caused so much chaos in Europe and many of the best minds flooded to the US to kickstart the technology revolution and seed the economic powerhouse that it is today.
Sadly, this article does not answer the question of why such a concentration of brilliance developed at Göttingen. If we wanted to build a new Göttingen, how would we do it? What factors allowed Göttingen to exist? For most of a century, Germany was leading in most scientific and academic fields, but what allowed this? When we think of the Golden Age of physics we are thinking of a cultural event that had its center in Germany, but why? And why has Germany been so dull and flat ever since? Clearly, building a liberal democracy is not enough to ensure such a cultural event. Much of Germany was liberal but non-democratic during its golden age, as other places were, but what made Germany special at this time?
this sounds like a good explanation:
University of Göttingen had more academic freedom than generations past. They were promised intellectual autonomy and freedom from close religious supervision. Instead, they were recruited solely to advance knowledge and carry out original research. The education of students was also more egalitarian than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were admitted and trained.
After working at several universities, and interacting with lots of institutions on both sides of the pond, I think this freedom issue is also what makes American Academia more successful than European Academia these days.
In Europe, academic freedom is limited because the structure we have resembles a very wide pyramid, with some minor differences across fields and countries. Junior professorships are more rare and more difficult to get into. The result is always the same, a full professor that controls his field locally and lots of expendable badly-paid postdocs working for him. Access to funding is also much more limited, which in turn restricts the capacity of said postdocs to pursue their own ideas, even while working under the umbrella of the professor.
In the US, tenure-track assistant professorships are much more common and requirements to apply are more flexible. Seed grants for junior faculty members are also common and not too hard to obtain. The result is a lot more freedom to explore. Basically, it is the same issue as with technology. EU suffers from over-regulation and control by some rent-seeking elites.
Differences (structure, funding, prestige) between institutes within Europe / USA are way larger than the differences between Europe versus USA.
What really matters in the end is whether an institute is able to attract “rockstars” in their field. Even better if these rockstars care about their institute and are willing to hire and develop young talent.
A single rockstar can elevate the prestige of an entire institution: look at Richard Sutton at University of Alberta, or Thomas Cech at Colorado.
This was my impression also, that there is a lot of difference how academia works across Europe. I'm not really an academic, but I went to a small international machine learning conference some years ago. The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French professor, apparently.
A French professor (eg CNRS researcher) is a civil servant, appointed for life, with substantial benefits such as pensions and absolute academic freedom. A postdoc in Norway has salary contingent on grants, limited to a few years, and is at the mercy of an advisor (a bad boss will destroy your career).
Making a few thousand euros more per month as a postdoc in Norway is nothing in comparison with a lifetime appointment at CNRS.
Competition for CNRS positions is as difficult as getting into a top tier faculty position in United States.
The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French professor, apparently.
Norway is a more expensive country to live in than France.
My experience is different. The main advantage of the American Academia is the availability of entry-level faculty positions. Success rates for funding applications are also higher. On the other hand, PhD students and postdocs are less independent from their supervisors than in Europe. They lack the usual protections as employees you would expect in Europe, and it's not as easy for them to get independent funding. Students and postdocs are also paid better than in the US (relative to what they would get outside the academia).
I'm not sure about the status of academic freedom. Administrators, politicians, and donors seem to have more influence in the US, and the entire academia seems to be more politicized.
I agree, that's essentially what I said. Entry-level faculty positions and funding are much more common in the US.
Isn't it much simpler than that?
US research receives 20 percent more funding relative to Europe (2017 data). More funding means more science? On top of that I would guess a post doc in the US can find a nice job at a company way way easier than the same person in Europe for the same reason: there are more higher-tech US companies with more big money who need the smartest people in the world to work for them.
I would also guess more and more loss of buying power (inflation without increase in productivity) in general causes a carreer in academia to become less and less attractive relative to a carreer in the commercial sector. That goes for both Europe and the US I suppose.
Example: I'm in Europe with a bachelors degree working as a freelancer (engineer) and probably make 300 to 500 percent more than people who work their ass off for decades in academia. So yeah there's "curiosity" and "passion" to stay in academia, but there's also cold hard cash.
My experience involves really well funded research areas in e.g. Oxbridge, sometimes better funded than their US counterparts I have interacted with. So I don't think its only about funding, but how funding is allocated. EU funding has a winner-takes-it-all structure. A few groups get enormous grants and the rest get nothing. Ironically, these groups have questionable productivity. Whereas in the US, e.g. NIH has lots of small and mid-sized grants that are suitable for a junior academic.
Junior faculty openings also exhibit the same trend and are much more common in the US. Among all people I have met in EU Academia throughout these years, only one person managed to progress to a faculty position. All others left Academia. Quite brutal, that figure should give policymakers some pause. In contrast, I know a few US academics that moved from PhD student to assistant and associate professor positions.
Exploiting postdocs without any promotion opportunities in sight is so common in EU that many countries are passing, or have already passed, laws to limit postdoc length. However, without more junior faculty openings and permanent staff scientist positions, I am not sure how this is going to work out.
While I'm not discounting your experience, American PhD students are burning out at a very high rate
Funding is probably higher in the US and of course if they drop out getting a job I'd usually easier than in Europe.
Nowadays various religion like paradigmas have returned to sabotage scientific progress. Some are obvious,other less so.the biggest though in my opinion are the "academia has to enulate a company" and the progressive paradigm.
Just hand money to individials/groups whos papers changed the world. If they want to buy services from a institution,thats their thing.
The education of students was also more egalitarian than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were admitted and trained.
This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of singular merit.
It's not clear whether it is desirable to build a new Göttingen. Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other than temporarily for conferences and visits.
"Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture" https://www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-proof-settles-geom... is an interesting article that describes the multi-year effort to obtain this important result. The final proof has nine authors affiliated with seven institutions: Denis Gaitsgory, Max Planck Institute; Sam Raskin and Joakim Færgeman, Yale University; Dima Arinkin, University of Wisconsin; Nick Rozenblyum, University of Toronto; Dario Beraldo, University College London; Lin Chen, Tsinghua University; Justin Campbell and Kevin Lin, University of Chicago.
Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other than temporarily for conferences and visits.
Lmao. Only someone who has never been a part of a high performance team with excellent mentors available in person throughout the day, can possibly believe this.
Alternatively, try this sentence: "Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of a married couple living together in one place to raise a family."
Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math can all be in LaTeX
Now this is the part I take issue with
Most likely their discussion were over zoom while scribbling over a blackboard.
I remember having an instant messanger 20years ago which would render LaTeX equations on the fly. The only one that can do it today is Emacs.
The analogy is a bit hyperbolic but not off base at all.
In my field, there is a lot of discussion over whether conferences should go virtual to ensure "equity", "inclusion", and all that; and to save pollution and CO2 from plane travel. According to the defenders of that take, current technology makes meeting in person totally unnecessary and online conferences can replace physical ones just fine. But curiously enough, everyone who I've seen defend that position are at elite universities in places like California where they have a high concentration of top figures in the field within a short drive. Almost no one from more remote areas (like myself) defends that... largely because many of us have stories where those polluting plane tickets helped us connect with relevant people in the field, learn and boost our career.
But back to the marriage analogy... when those people from top universities make that comment, I usually tell them that if they are so interested in equity, diversity, not polluting and all that jazz, and since according to them online interaction is enough and getting together physically is just a luxury, they should then take remote PhD students (which would even let them select from a larger pool!). It's an obvious conclusion of their position, right?
The answer is always crickets.
There's truth in both. For countries with little research funding (Eastern Europe in my case), travelling to top conferences is often prohibitively expensive. Top AI conferences are regularly in places like Hawaii. This excludes many regions and those researchers must submit to lower tier conferences, or - as already commonly happens - they have to move to a richer country and do research there.
Remote conferences and lower publishing fees definitely help people at these underfunded places. But it is true that being there in person is still much more valuable. Informal face to face interaction at posters, joint dinners between different research groups, mingling during coffee breaks etc. are not replaceable by a Zoom Q&A.
Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math can all be in LaTeX
Sex and LaTex! I dig it!
\LaTeX prevents conception of new ideas. You really need to rawdog it on a black or whiteboard to see that.
I have to agree, high performance teams need to be together in proximity to do world changing stuff (or maybe in AR worlds that are as natural as real worlds in the future). Remote work is for big standard work that doesn’t require too much innovation or if 1 person is capable of carrying the team. Yet to see counter examples to this
If I remember right Deep Work by Cal Newport talks about Bell Labs and how that came to be such an epicentre of invention back in the day. The author reckons that the architecture of the building had a lot to do with it. It allowed the employees to do uninterrupted, concentrated work when needed but then when exiting their offices the design of the building facilitated lots of chance encounters with other people in other departments which meant a lot of exchanging of ideas and knowledge. You don't get this kind of "hive mind" effect with remote work.
There were plenty of accomplished mathematicians before Hilbert. But the real golden age of Göttingen math and physics was due to a large recruitment effort led by David Hilbert. After realizing some early success in his recruitment effort, the reputation of Göttingen as the place to be for math and physics grew more organically.
It shows you how valuable it is to have these superstars in your institute. Hiring One hilbert is worth more than hiring a thousand median scientists, and way cheaper too!
This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of singular merit.
(from a comment above) Idk much about math or anything would love to make it to AGI that can tell me which opinion is correct when reading HN
I read a bunch of Hilbert's letters once, thinking it would be an interesting window into a significant mind. It was 90% departmental politics - not really the cynical kind: he was really concerned with getting good mathematicians jobs (in Göttingen or elsewhere). And you get to watch him observe all his efforts come to naught as the German political situation goes nuts building up to the Second World War, and employment restrictions are added, people flee, etc. .
That is just partially true. Hilbert was essential but "just" one factor amongst others.
For example, there was also Felix Klein (who brought Hilbert to Göttingen) who was more on the teaching side. He even designed the house from the ground up in a way that he thought would be optimal for teaching and working together.
There is a really good article by Norbert Schappacher called
"Das Mathematische Institut der Universität Göttingen im Nationalsozialismus"
or
"The Mathematical Institute of the University of Göttingen under National Socialism"
https://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_file...
You can DeepL it. Here is just the first paragraph:
Göttingen has been a name in the mathematical world since Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855). However, from the end of the 19th century until the National Socialists seized power, it was for many the center of the mathematical world, and in this respect it outstripped the traditional centers of interest: Paris and Berlin was above all the joint work of David Hilbert (1862–1943) and Felix Klein (1849–1925), around whom an increasingly important mathematical institute was formed. Hilbert's role was on the side of creative mathematical research, which he pursued with complete openness to all possible new ideas and with a versatility not seen since Gauss. Felix Klein, on the other hand, was above all an exceptionally successful organizer and academic teacher in Göttingen – four years before his appointment to Göttingen, a health breakdown had ended the period of his most original mathematical research.
In addition, mathematics and physics were very much intertwined in those days - one inspired the other. And Göttingen was essentially a village - everyone knew everyone. They would meet up in a bar in the evening and speak about whats on their mind. That way, there was also a regular get-together with the local industry.
For example Robert Wichard Pohl, head of the 1st physics institute (called "a patriarch of physics" or "The good Lord"), Gustav Tammann, head of the institute for physical chemistry, and the heads of Ruhstrat (a local company specialized in developing and manufacturing high-temperature industrial furnaces, transformers, etc.) regularly met. Pohl wanted to have a furnace for what was later called the Czochralski method (creating pure crystals) and Ruhstrat built the stuff.
Or in 1894, in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Prof. Walter Nernst, Ruhstrat created the adjustable sliding resistor, the basis for adjusting and changing resistances as well as current and voltage. They supplied the first private homes and businesses in Göttingen with electricity using electrical block stations and developed the electricity meter.
Lots of aspects came together to thrive, not just Hilbert.
P.S. Fun fact: Ernst (or Adolf?) Ruhstrat had the first car in town and later sold it to Tammann.
I'll venture a couple guesses.
1) Humboldt's university reforms creating graduate education and research universities. This doesn't explain the seed of German intellectual activity as it was a relatively late development, but it does explain the institutionalization of German intellectual activity. As to the seed...
2) German was the language with the most literate speakers in Europe during the Enlightenment. For a few centuries after the Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions, and Germans were the most numerous of the Protestant cultural-linguistic groups.
Sources?
For the “For a few centuries after the Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions” claim, the map in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Age_of_Enligh... supports that claim. It mentions ten countries. The four most literate were largely Protestant, the six least literate largely Catholic.
The map in the link is strange. Shows 21st century countries while it pertains to times a few hundred years ago. This doesn't convey the trust.
You are assuming a causal relation direct link between underlying factors and outcomes. It may well be that if Gottingen didn't exist some other place would have been the epicenter of a scientific revolution that was ripe to happen. One would then try to figure out what made that place special.
But if some other place had been the epicenter of a scientific revolution would Gottingen have prevented that? Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas discovering things independently? We could ask, why only Gottingen?
Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas discovering things
We did. Göttingen was an important place, but not the epicenter of math. Mathematicians were working all over the globe from China to India, Russia to Britain, America and Germany. Just to mention one of the maybe most gifted people of that period in the world, Srinivasa Ramanujan, people are literally still going through his work and finding novel things.
It's just that we're much better story tellers when it comes to some regions of the world. If you went by movies and biographies you'd think Alan Turing did half of all computer science, who remembers Konrad Zuse? That's one area where Germany routinely gets snubbed in the public imagination.
Göttingen is still a top 200 university, and as far as I remember a talk by Jens Frahm has the highest density of living Nobel Laureates. After the war a famous French singer made a song about Göttingen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9b6E4MnCWk And I think she sings of a left leaning free spirit that bloomed again after the war very soon. Academic lifestyle and a focus on the strife for knowledge are still substantial cultural and economic pillars of Göttingen.
I was thinking the divide in teutonic culture is not north and south but diagonal. Too far east and too far south they get trigger happy, Schwabians just optimally arrogant, Hamburgers are too nice..
Draw a line that passes thru Ulm & Goettingen, wide enough to contain also ___
Indeed. Hans-Gunther Klein, the then director of the Junges Theater Göttingen, had seen the famous French chansonnière Barbara at a concert in early 1964 and invited her to perform in Göttingen. Due to her life story and her own escape from the Nazis, she initially declined the invitation, but then reluctantly accepted it the following day. She demanded that a grand piano be provided for her performance. When she arrived at the theater on July 4, 1964, however, she found a baby grand piano on the stage. Barbara was extremely annoyed and categorically refused to give the concert. It seemed impossible to fulfill her request, although Hans-Gunther Klein tried everything. In the end, however, a grand piano was procured, which an old lady had made available and which ten students carried through the city. Despite the artist's initial displeasure and the two-hour delay before the concert began, Barbara was enthusiastically celebrated by the audience, which greatly impressed her.
Due to the great success of her first appearance and the unexpectedly warm atmosphere in the city, she extended her engagement by a week. On the afternoon before her last concert, she summarized the impressions she had gathered over the past few days, which had been unexpectedly positive, in the rough version of the chanson Göttingen, which she wrote in the garden of the Junges Theater, and performed it (not yet fully formulated and with a different melody) that same evening. The success of the chanson was sudden and overwhelming. She then returned to Paris, where she completed the lyrics and composition.
The Junges Theater at that time was housed in the house of the current Lumiere cinema.
It is actually also seeming to be asking the wrong question. Not why Göttingen, but why Germany. The universe may have been a natural attractor like big universities everywhere, but if the country surrounding it were impoverished mentally, it would not have much to attract.
One answer given at the time by Heinrich Heine was that Germany didn’t have the revolution that put the new bourgeois class in power (like in France). Therefore censorship, political repression and the dead end of many „German“ micro states meant that philosophy and other disciplines where a way to work on the topics of the new age without getting in conflict with the extraordinary dimension of political backwardness. You could say England is the proof that it does not have to be that way, but they where pioneering capitalist economy, so that’s another case. Heinrich Heine hated Göttingen btw.
I think you're mixing the question of what creates great mathematics department and what makes a region generally interesting (plus the article actually answers all those questions well as other commenters note).
Germany has many great mathematicians at present. Just by expanding population and budgets, it probably has more great mathematicians than in the Göttingen days. These mathematicians are not as famous as the Göttingeners of the 1920s, however, fundamentally because earlier mathematicians laid the foundation of the field and later researchers basically have built on those foundations and can't claim the same glory.
As to post-war Germany being boring - I'd assume but it seem neither here nor there.
I wonder how Nazi-Germany would have worked out without antisemitism.
There is a such example: USSR. Stalin is not so different to Hitler.
Complete opposite economic policies. State ownership and collectivization under Stalin, privatization and killing unions under Hitler.
The "socialism" in the name was just branding. The Hitler-wing of the Nazi party was extremely right wing, especially in economic matters, and financed by the German industry. Anyone in the party holding sympathy with strasserism and the like was quickly purged or murdered.
Asking how fascism without antisemitism would have have fared makes no sense, as having internal and external enemies is a crucial part of fascism. Pinochet in Chile might be an example where fascism wasn't particular antisemitic but I assure you it was still not great for intellectual development, on the contrary.
privatization and killing unions under Hitler.
That was not defining for the economic policies under Hitler. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany
The Nazi economic policy had one goal in the early years: forcing the German economy to concentrate on wartime preparations. Building up the military power and the military economy. All the companies were forced to work towards that goal. Many Germans were put into forced labor ("Reichsarbeitsdienst", ...) to support the build-up of the military and the military economy.
Large amounts of weapons had to be developed and produced: for Heer, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.
The goal was to be ready for a large-scale war in the East in just 4 years.
With the war started, the economy was mostly a state-directed war economy, private or not. Even though there were large private companies they were all directed to work for the war economy.
The Nazis themselves were also involved in large scale industrial production. The Concentration Camps were also producing for the military. "Vernichtung durch Arbeit" (-> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_through_labour )
That the Nazis were supported by leaders of the German industry did not mean that the Nazis were interested in privatizing, market economies or such. There was one goal: reorganizing the German economy to build-up and run the large scale war in the East. The goal was to colonize and enslave East Europe. Finances were concentrated on the war economy and other economic activities were no longer important or even possible. Companies involved would profit from it financially and expand. Companies involved in private sector activities would have a hard time. For example finances and raw materials was with priority allocated to the military economy.
And what after the war? They sure had plans and policies about the economy after it was all transformed to solely support the war effort?
They didn't get very far with anything more realistic. A lot of the plans and policies were caused by the development of the war. Hitler himself was not an economist. His background was art and military. His hobby was city architecture and military strategy...
A large scale area in Eastern Europe was dreamed about (-> upto 1933) and in 1939 the war started with the attack on Poland to realize this war for Lebensraum, where the Germans then would be the elite race and the others were slaves (or dead). This east european region would provide food, energy, raw materials, ... There were ideas about what this large "Reich" would be like. But that was not close to be realized, given that Germany was deeper in war with every day, on two sides, 1941 onwards: in the east in the Soviet Union and against a US lead war in the west. Germany was busy fighting the war.
43/44 some German economist were beginning design an economy in more detail for a time after a war. But it then became clear that it was after a lost war (with the Nazis no longer in power) and that this time probably was not far away, with then the war being lost in 1945.
He was similarly evil of course. But he was a totally different creature (and came to and held power in ways very different) from that other guy.
That said, one can certainly imagine a NS movement that left the Jews alone and concentrated its wrath the other usual suspects. It might not have achieved quite the fiery intensity, or had quite the degree of hypnotic effect that it had on so many people that it did without the singular choice of a primary "hate object" that it made
Resonating as it did with centuries of psychic undercurrents in regard to the position of the Jewish minority in European society.
It would have had a different name. Antisemitism was the central pillar of National Socialism.
No, not really. It was a dumb ideology, but not as dumb as "points 1-10: Jews bad". Like almost any ideology that went anywhere, it had positive things that it valued, and these were more foundational than things (people...) that it wanted to remove or destroy.
Yes, really.
I can't recommend reading Mein Kampf, because it sucks, but it's essential to have an informed opinion on this subject.
The core of Nazism was that it viewed humanity as a struggle to the death between different peoples (such as Germanic people and Slavs), and that elements such as Jews, disabled people, homosexuals, communists, were like a parasite slowly killing the German people if not destroyed.
It's really one of the most destructive and self-defeating ideologies ever, much more so than e.g. fascism in Italy and Spain.
I wonder how Nazi-Germany would have worked out without antisemitism.
That was often heard in Germany after the war. Hitler's politics were not seen as bad, if only the jews were not killed. Often, it was mentioned that Hitler's achievement was to reduce the mass unemployment after getting to power in 1933.
"Nazism" is defined by more than "antisemitism" -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
* the main goal of the Nazis was to conquer and enslave East Europe.
* for that the Nazis transformed Germany into a war machine
* the war to enlarge Germany was the defining goal and everything was forced to support that goal
* generally Nazi ideology was racist and brutal. There were lots of groups which were to be killed and/or enslaved.
* it was a Dictatorship with Hitler as a "Führer"
Even if Nazi Germany were not "antisemitic" it would still have started the war in the East to conquer East Europe as a colony (-> "Lebensraum" -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum ).
The "hunger plan" is also devastating to read about, just a whole different scale of murder and enslavement
Having a scapegoat was crucial for the Nazis. Without the jews, who should have taken that role?
And without refugees and woke feminists who would the modern rightwings blame for all the misery in society?
Having a scapegoat was crucial for the Nazis. Without the jews, who should have taken that role?
If they had arised a few decades later they probably would scapegoat immigrants.
“The center of mathematics shifted quickly during the Nazi era and in the wake of World War II. Courant, Weyl and others helped move it to the U.K. and the U.S., where most of the top-ranked mathematics programs are located today.”
One of many instances in history where a city’s rise to prominence was kicked off by political turmoil or religious persecution in the leading city of the previous era. For example: immigration of merchants and weavers from Belgium to the Netherlands following Spanish occupation and the Fall of Antwerp, Huguenot emigration from France during the French Wars of Religion, etc.
When trying to answer the question of why a certain city/country/company started becoming successful, it’s often a good starting point to ask who moved there and what skills and experience did they bring, rather than mistaking it as a static group of individuals.
Another corollary: it really pays to be a tolerant, stable and welcoming country. When other countries do stupid things you can benefit from an inflow of talent and experience.
I wonder in today's times what country(ies) such scholars would move to if they were affected by extreme right wing persecution in their own countries, seeing that the wave is strong almost everywhere, especially in the country that was pretty much the the destination for last migration i.e starting 1930s from Europe.
Germany? You meets lots of Turkish and Russian Academia here.
Chinese scholars are running away from left communist china into the US
The "progressive" left of today is quickly running out those same asian (and other) scientists out of US and CAN universities, via social media mob lynching and DEI inquisitions.
Im not seeing any right wing movement playing out with the same dynamics.
Where are these institutions affected by right wing persecution?
Wasn't Israel invented to provide that? It's hard to think of a more effective immigration policy than "free entry for Jews".
Also it's probably important that the immigrants come after a turmoil, so their lives and research are reorganized, getting rid of political/hierarchical baggage and starting fresh with other top minds.
Another example is Bavaria, which used to be a poorly developed place until the post-ww2 immigration of Germans from the east happened.
Another corollary: it really pays to be a tolerant, stable and welcoming country.
Yup. The US has a pretty incredible history of brain draining European countries when they become intolerant or living there became otherwise intolerable. So many inventors in the states were brilliant immigrants.
One interesting annecdote: combinatory logic uses single letter names for all its combinators (S, K, I, etc). Those names are all in german, despite being invented by a Russian jew (Moses Shoenfinkel) and further developed by an american (Haskell Curry). Both worked at Göttingen at the time.
despite being invented by a Russian jew (Moses Shoenfinkel)
Interestingly, that name doesn't look particularly Russian.
German Jews often possess incredibly Slavic names like "Moskowitz", suggesting an unclear boundary between being "German" vs "Russian".
It’s most likely because Russian and Steppe jews arrived from the Rhine area after the black plague.
So, "German Jews" come from Russia, but "Russian Jews" come from Germany?
Moskowitz in particular is the German spelling of a Russian patronymic identifying the man's father as having a Yiddish name. That's several cycles of transferring between Russia and Germany.
Yes, in fact! Ashkenazi Jews were diaspora’d to the Rhine by the Romans and to Poland by middle age German polities for “causing the black plague”. The Russians conquered the areas of the Steppe they settled. There was an exodus of Russian Jews to the west during the pogroms of the early 1900s, with many (including my great grandparents) settling in Austria and Germany.
It's not just mathematics but physics as well.
For example Paul Dirac, Max Born, Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Heisenberg, John von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Max Planck, and Wolfgang Pauli either studied, did research or had a profession in Göttingen
The Nazis destroyed Germanys progress
Yes, this may be relevant:
In 1934, David Hilbert, by then a grand old man of German mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education. Rust asked, “How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?” Hilbert replied, “There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore.”
It's really crazy how all these people overlap at Gottingen in the 1920s.
Take Oppenheimer, for instance. He transfers to Göttingen from Cambridge in 1926 (after a relatively miserable time at the Cavendish labs studying under J.J. Thompson). He earns his PhD at Göttingen quickly. By September 1927, he's back in the USA on a teaching fellowship with Caltech.
So, Oppenheimer isn't at Göttingen for very long - not even 2 years! But in that brief time, he meet Max Born, James Franck, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, John Von Neumann, Eugene Wigner who are also all there.
Wolfgang Pauli and Enrico Fermi had moved to other institutions by 1926, and Edward Teller doesn't get there until 1930 - but it's plausible that the Göttingen connection (and their relationship to Max Born) are how Oppenheimer meets them.
I suppose a similar argument could be made about Bell Labs, where much of the digital foundations were invented.
As I recall, Bell Labs had a license to print money -- they had a government permitted monopoly on the US voice telephone network.
So, for one effort, they saw that for the electronic signal amplifiers they needed, vacuum tubes, amazing and powerful, were too big, hot, expensive, and delicate so invented transistors, patented them, and, realizing the power, gave the patent to the world. Today if we had to pay a penny a transistor, then the 8 core AMD 4.0 GHz processor I bought for $115 (with HOW many transistors?) would cost -- hmm, could buy a house, a big one!
So, net, Bell Labs was a big success for Bell, its stockholders, the US voice telephone network, the future of technology, the economy, and the standard of living of the world.
How to do that again? Hmm ....
Apple rolls in money in a way very similar to Bell, even though it doesn't have a legal monopoly.
It's a bit amusing that the article stops with the 1930s exodus and entirely ignores the 1940s exodus to the USA organized by US intelligence agencies under Operation Paperclip. It's true not many of this latter group were involved in pure mathematics, I suppose:
Operation Paperclip doesn't seem to have been specific to Göttingen so it's only tangentially related to the topic.
It’s amazing how much America has benefited from brain drain from totalitarian countries. We should keep it up.
us benefits from brain drain from developing nations as well, which isn’t as cool
'Want more, get more' (related Comic it's in german... but ...who may know for what's good... I'm a non native english speaker...)
regards...
Having graduated from a Polish university and having done a semester in Germany I can say that at least the people who attended university in Germany had an idea what are they interested in and what do they want to do after graduating, while me and all my peers in Poland just went to college because of societal pressure and kept jumping the hurdles put up by academic staff who knew no better and were taught that academia is just about about bootlicking your way up while pretending to teach.
Bernhard Riemann, the head of mathematics at Göttingen from 1859 to 1866, invented Riemannian geometry, which paved the way for Einstein’s future work on relativity. Felix Klein, the chair of mathematics from 1886 to 1913, was the first to describe the Klein bottle,...
...paving the way for Cliff Stoll!
I worked with an older German man who was a consultant on a research project that I was working on in graduate school. He was born in Gottingen and told stories how as a kid he got to test his paper airplanes in their wind tunnels with these famous scientists.
The political changes that lead to the talent exodus from Goettingen are not, in fact, so different from the ideological oaths required by much of US academia now, and seem to me to be a great way to eliminate our centers of intellectual brilliance.
Constance Reid's wonderful biography "Hilbert" [New York: Springer-Verlay, 1983; ISBN: 0-387-04999-1] describes a lot of the history of mathematics in Göttingen. It may be the finest mathematical biography I've ever read.
Hermann Weyl wrote an article on Hilbert's mathematical work (from the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society [pdf]):
https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1944-50-09/S0002-9904-1944...
Hilbert's mathematical range was enormous. Among many things, he was known for his 23 "Hilbert problems" which influenced a lot of subsequent mathematics:
Benjamin Yandell, "The Honors Class - Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers". Natick, MA: A. K. Peters, 2002. [ISBN:1-56881-141-1]
There's been significant progress on some of the problems since Yandell's book, but it's still a good introduction.
Göttingen became a center of math clearly because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss, the Princeps mathematicorum. His influence was crucial for the development of math and science in Germany of the 19th century.
And, with all due respect, many people outside the US don't realise how lucky the best minds were that there was a stable, prosperous, (actively) welcoming society to bring these best minds out of the self-inflicted chaos of Europe.
Self-inflicted is a tad questionable. US played a big role in industrializing USSR. US also played a role in post-WWI peace deals which eventually lead to world war part II.
> US also played a role in post-WWI peace deals which eventually lead to world war part II.
Woodrow Wilson's proposed peace deal didn't involve imposing harsh reparations on Germany. That was the doing of Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France, who was under pressure to make Germany's reparations bill as large as possible as retribution for the war.
While that is true, it is really important to add that that doesn't absolve the Germans one bit.
Indeed, though it's also true that the Germans should be held accountable for their own actions during the war, and not solely held responsible for WWI itself, which was a continent-wide effort.
why should they be? none of the so called winners are held accountable for their actions. best we can do is forget it all and move on, otherwise it will forever be a case of finger pointing.
By "the Germans" I don't mean modern-day Germans, I mean the people of the era. And indeed, nobody should get a pass for the atrocities of war, the winners included. But no, we should not "forget it all", that's the worst possible thing you could do. The war happened, it was terrible, its consequences reverberate to this day, and we should all remember how it happened and why so that we can attempt to avoid having it happen again.
There’s another important bit. Wilson policies played a big role in creating fractured Central Europe in interwar. I’m personally torn on this. On one hand, this gave my country a chance for independence. On the other hand, this made a bunch of puppets for Germany and Russia to play with. Maybe a unified buffer would have prevented WWII.
It's fine to speculate what could have been, but historically the record for regional "nation building" of this sort has been mixed at best, given the examples of former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
Yep. But it was a mess either way. On the other hand, if there was some sort of Central Europe superpower building, Poland would probably have abused that. As it did anyway eventually occupying lands of 3 of its neighbors before being taken down by 4th…
In any case, some sort of Intermarium probably was the only thing that could have prevented WWII in one shape or another.
Still as a French, I think we could have done better much earlier. Much much earlier. The US isnt the cause of our problems, we are. We are even the cause of the US in the first place, you know, eradicating the natives, enslaving the africans, colonizing the land.
It's ALL self-inflicted. But there was no sense of self at the time, what's new today is that Europe is starting, slowly and shakily, to see itself as a whole. At least I cannot imagine today ever wanting to murder a German more than a French. Ever.
We appreciate the sweet deal on the Louisiana Purchase, but "cause of the US" is a bit much, don't you think?
I meant Europeans, you know, we start seeing ourselves as a whole now, I'm not just French in my mind - the US was a "European" colony, with Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and the UK completely transforming the land. Without Europe, there would be no states to unite, right ?
But ofc at the time it was very different, Europeans didn't exist per se, each country saw itself as completely different from the others.
What I meant is accusing the US to cause a problem in Europe is a tautology: we made the US in a way, so if the US come back to cause issues, well, it's ALSO our own fault. Every problem in Europe is "self" (that "self" changed with time) inflicted, it's not the Asians or the Africans causing conflicts, there is no external factor to blame, we MUST fix them our"selves".
Ironically, lots of problems in Africa or Asia were also inflicted by Europeans, they can claim an external factor, them. We really messed up a lot of the world, for reasons that are now beyond comprehension since we're raised by the people who stopped it, and it's a sin I have trouble to carry sometimes. Gladly, most alive today seem to have forgotten, forgiven or benefitted from it, doesn't make me forget those not alive today :(
I think by “we” they meant Europe, not France.
France also helped out a bit during the American Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
(look at the combattants section)
It's my understanding that it's a myth that reparations led to the economic catastrophe in interwar Germany. What's more important is that Germany financed WW1 by borrowing. (EDIT: being corrected below.)
Wilson policies were more about dealing with Europe after dissolution of Austrian, Russian and Ottoman empires.
Reparations were in the same order of magnitude as debt. In the end, it was 100-120B marks in debt vs 121B reparations (after reductions). Hard to find definitive numbers on debt as there are only estimations out there.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/100933.htm
In such a situation, the reparations are the straw that broke the camel's back, and lead to an economic catastrophe.
Most people welcoming them were probably of German descent themselves.
Lots of people of German descent in the US!
In WW2, consider the names of the top US general in Europe and the top admiral in the Pacific.
Eisenhower for the general? Don't have an idea about the admiral.
Chester W. Nimitz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W._Nimitz
Oh, wow. I vaguely seem to remember that there was an aircraft carrier or other naval ship named after him. Read it somewhere long back, IIRC. Will google it, or it may be in your link.
Edit:
Found it in seconds, second para in your link.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz
There is much to read about him. I suggest Ian Toll's Pacific War trilogy.
thanks, will take a look.
wow, the downvoter trolls are rocking their stupidity again. just because I said I thought I had read sometime earlier somewhere that a ship was named after Nimitz, before checking the Wikipedia article mentioned by the person who replied to me above, some creeps think that I was lying to score points, piddly hn points, that is. keep on creeping out, bros. show your calibre.
Interestingly, the name Nimitz doesn't sound that much Germanic, it could have been a Germanized version of an originally Slavic name like Němec. (Which would mean "German"; quite a recursion :)
The Nimitz family stems from Bremen, and quite deeply so (13th century), which would fit, because Bremen/Lueneburger Heide is not that far from territories settled by Polabian Slavs.
It was a real luck of the historical draw, talk about fan boys adding to canon! Just in quick succession and with ample room for pedantry.
In Europe you have the Enlightenment with all that entails.
Then in America you have Ben Franklin and then the revolution. Later Charles E Elliot gets frustrated and tours the great schools in Europe only to come back to boston and reform Harvard. Which leads to it being emulated at Stanford.
Later on the US military decides on Stanford to focus on its microwave research for radar setting the groundwork for what becomes Silicon Valley.
This is probably due a more indepth essay.
I would want to add to such an essay the important details about how the King of France financed US independence and supplied a navy to fight the King of England on behalf of the US.
But to limit ourselves to the outcome of WWII, there isn't much more to say. The US actively sought these brilliant refugees. The latter were glad to escape to a country that wasn't a murderous dictatorship.
Absolutely! I really brushed over it, but for those that are one of the lucky 10,000…
Franklin is a celebrity in his day, and is such a party animal and keen wit he wins over the french aristocracy. Leading to said fleet, which is undoubtedly the key factor in deciding the outcome of the revolutionary with their presence at the battle of Yorktown. But before all that he is going up down the colonies organizing philosophical groups, his Juntas, meeting and connecting the thinkers and subsequent founding fathers. While in addition running a printing press sowing popular dissent and none more influential than publishing Thomas Paine’s pamphlets. The dude was the original punk!
That was probably also because he was a good diplomat. I have read his autobiography, which is very interesting, and shows how versatile he was.
Lot of us do. And with the defense, it is still relevant.
I wouldn't call it exactly "welcoming" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-...
AFAIK it was by design, the US policy makers actively worked for it.
Also, I think the US will have something similar in reverse: Some of the brightest people educated in the US are going back to their home countries because they have visa troubles, social problems or simply better opportunities due to simple things like housing or structural things like the industry moved there.
Also, judging by the enormous hate stream on the social media, many can be nudged to move out of the US to have some piece of mind. After Brexit, many EU citizens choose not to stay in UK even if they had that option because they have become a political subject and since they are not desperate why stay and risk it?
China appear to be the next frontrunner in this. Many times, if you venture outside of the angloshpere you find out that somewhere(often in China) somebody is already doing it at the same level or better.
There probably is going to be a correction at valuations. Cool stuff is happening in China and elsewhere and the USA is in a disarray with idelogies so extreme that are not too far of from the stuff that ruined Europe in the first half of the 1900s. Coup attempts, assassination attempts, election denial, mainstream targeting of group of people, rich looking into capitalising on all that when social disparity is so large that some live like kings others teetering - this is not a healthy society.
Are you familiar with Chinese politics and society? It’s not a great Sino melting pot.
The language barrier alone will stop Chinese cultural hegemony.
They have a lot of problems I'm reading about but there will be a void with the fall of the US from global superpower status and that void wouldn't be left unattended.
Anyway, with the banning of TikTok it's pretty clear to me: No more global companies without hard tech. The US used to be the bastion of free global trade but they resigned. Anything that relies on things like network effect or branding will become local because countries can enforce it. If some country has the engineering capacity to build a website where people post texts and media and others like and share that media then the American version wouldn't be allowed.
Therefore, the US economy will become as powerful as having about 300M citizens, not as global power. China has huge number of citizens, they win by default as long as they can do the hard tech good enough and they apparently can do that.
US embargoes only pushed them to make their local alternatives and they made them pretty good, whatever they make they make it for over a billion people.
EU has a version of this problem, that is they don't have one large chunk of people who speak the same language and trade on the same rules. The trading on the same rules is something that EU fixed a lot but the EU is still fragmented and this makes EU companies anaemic because they can't get huge without going global. When the global trade is gone, the US will have the same issue(probably still better situation than EU but much worse than China).
The US has been embargoing industries since its Independence. I doubt TikTok will be a remotely meaningful event in the history of the nation.
The things don't stay the same outside of the US, therefore you can't expect that doing the same thing will always result in the way.
There are very few technologies where the US or EU has an edge over China. Embargoes helped a lot with that.
In fact it becomes absurd, for example the EU/US/UK wants to make the world a better place by replacing ICE cars with electric ones. China builds great cars for cheap in huge amounts and the EU/US/UK act like Gavin Belson saying "I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do". There you lose the environment claims, even if EU/US/UK have a point.
The west lost the technological edge, the Americans like to claim that EU regulated too much but in the American case it appears that not regulated billionaires didn't invest in tech but resorted into rent seeking and now they expect the politicians to protect them from the Chinese companies who allegedly received unfair support from their governments but nonetheless they made better products.
I don't know I'm not a clairvoyant or expert analyst in this stuff, I'm just pessimistic on the near future of humanity and the west will be the bigger losers because they lost the plot.
Why are you giving a free hand to China to do as it likes and then blame the west for following its interest? Why do you give China a pass at forcing any western business to always enter a joint enterprise with chinese firms if it wants to do business in China? Seeing a lot of critique about the blunders of the west for trying to have more leverage and no critique for chinese practices.
I'm not giving China a free pass for anything. The stuff you are talking about paved the way for Chinese catching up and eventually surpassing the west but that doesn't change the outcome.
I'm not a China fan at all, in fact I'm very concerned that the west will imitate China and in fact banning TikTok was a sign of it. Banning is the Chinese way.
The Chinese don’t support free trade. Why should the US support free trade with China? Why not embargo them until such time as China opens up? This isn’t a hypocritical contradiction. The US supports free trade with those who support free trade. They suppose power imbalances with those who support power imbalances.
The US becomes a China with crazy politics and poor infrastructure then. A shitty world where the citizens are a commodity that can be pushed around to consume from companies who such at R&D but good at lobbying.
Remember when the US was pro-free speech and criticised dictatorships for blocking social media? Kiss good bye to that, now it's US that blocks it. Chinese citizen experience, imported into the west.
If Trump wins, there's Project 2025 where they plan to replace every government position with party loyalists - Just like China.
Outside congresspeople pushing for re-election I feel like I haven't heard this at all. Not since the Snowden leaks has the US been so happy-go-lucky with their denouncement of surveillance.
You have to think about this like a country that has the ability to globally project power or take part in regional war.
The US (and Europe) doesn’t want to lose its domestic auto manufacturing industry because it can be easily retooled to pump out war machines when required. [0]
You don’t let a foreign nation (especially an adversarial nation like China) destroy an industry that is critical during total war if you’re the global hegemon, or more realistically, a country that may go to war in the future (see Volvo in Sweden, Renault in France, etc)
Here’s GM Defense, Ford and Chrysler have similar histories during the World Wars, as do auto manufacturers in various European countries.
[0] https://www.gmdefensellc.com/site/us/en/gm-defense/home/abou...
I understand the motives and I agree, however it still means that China makes batter cheaper EVs that supposedly can save the planet and suddenly saving the planet is not THAT important and it can wait when we play politics, meanwhile why don't you eat less meat and use paper straws?
The planet will be fine and people will adapt
A lot of people aren't as optimistic about China anymore because they constricted their population pyramid too much (one child policy), haven't reached first world affluence and are now facing an aging population. By 2100 China might be down to 850m people and the US might even grow to 450m. Economic prowess is all that matters in the end, because economic power allows for military and industrial hegemony.
That's true, they have huge demographics issues. But the west has them too at different extent.
Also, Chinese don't operate on western principles therefore you can't expect same outcomes. Aging population issues are much different when you have enough production base that can sustain old people with small number of young people(they no longer rely on manual labour as much as they used to). In the west aging population means reduction in consumption(therefore reduced investments, economy slowdown etc.), but in countries like China that doesn't have to be a problem, they can simply keep producing as needed. When the west was preoccupied with investing all the money into optimising advertisement, they invested in wast infrastructure.
I'm personally more concerned about the west than China. Well, of course I would be since I'm part of the west but yeah I think you get the point.
"Cool stuff is happening in China"
Not just cool stuff... I just finished listening to several podcasts with a Czech journalist who covered China for decades.
He said that under Xi, the country has become superparanoid. Before Xi's term, people would talk to journalists mostly freely, and even foreign journalists would get a pass in their daily activities unless they touched something really sensitive (Falun Gong, Tibet, Uyghur unrest).
After Xi came to power, the situation started to worsen, police started to follow journalists around and harass them for banal reasons, regular Chinese started being afraid of talking even about trivial topics. The former Overton window narrowed to a "compulsory vs. banned" dichotomy. One of his last experiences was that he went to a tomato processing factory to report on tomato harvest and was immediately arrested by the police because how dare you record something about a tomato factory.
I don't think this environment is going to be particularly conductive to economic growth, and the latest trends seem to concur. China is strangling its future growth in the name of National Security.
Yeah, dictators eventually fail because they make the wrong decision at such a large scale the system can’t heal itself.
In terms of GPD the US was the world's largest economy well before World War I. Europe choosing to self-immolate twice before mid-century only served to widen the gap.
references here are important.. it seems reductive framing to judge using economic units without acknowledging the interdependancies of real human living conditions and contexts, around the globe; secondly, unified national currency in the USA was not exactly a settled thing, not long before that era.. so measuring has to have some wrinkles in it, no?
Huh? During the preceding decades the US invented the skyscraper, was home to the world’s tallest building, invented the light bulb, air conditioning, the airplane, the supermarket, and cotton candy!
some of the ideas were REHASHED from Europe, some were invented by Europe migrants
They go the other way.
The US surpassed the UK in per capita income in the 1880s. However, American yeomen farmers, factory workers etc. were far better off than (non-UK) Europeans even in 1800, hence millions of Europeans immigrating. By 1913, the American was still earning almost twice as much as the German or French: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...
"The United States has been the world's largest national economy in terms of GDP since around 1890."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
If you consider US versus any single European country yes.
But we are talking about US getting brains from all over Europe. The combined GDP of the top 3 European countries (Germany, UK, France) pre WW1/2 is larger than the US, just as the GDP per capita of any individual European country pre WW1/2 is higher as well.
Is that true? https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
Oh indeed, I looked at the GDP numbers and divided by the current population ratio, looks like it changed more than I thought across time.
This is something I always say and amazed by. Just imagine; all the knowledge of transistors, radar and nuclear fission…All because of World Wars and, as you mentioned, all those great minds that came to the USA fleeing the war. Amazing
Not only the ones that fled, there was also a huge brain drain after world war into both US and USSR, with von Braun probably being the most prominent.
Brain drain or taking hostages?
Looks like some people ain’t aware how Soviets took German scientists as POVs and forced them to work for them. Americans did pretty much the same thing playing Nuremberg card.
They didn't flee the war. They fled the Nazi oppression before the war. See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.
Once the war started, the borders were closed.
Not quite true in regard to border closures. It certainly became much more difficult to move around or out of Occupied Europe, but significant numbers of people managed to do so (via for example Portugal, Turkey and Vichy Africa).
It was both. Many fled after the war, seeking better opportunities outside Germany. So many, in fact, that the Berlin Wall was built.
Now they're happy to trump up some BS about "America innovates, Europe regulates"
It's easy to "innovate" when you're starting from a "clean slate".
"It's easy to "innovate" when you're starting from a "clean slate"."
This is an interesting remark. It seems that countries like Estonia or Poland, which significantly overhauled their systems in the 1990s, are more innovative than Italy, Germany or France, whose systems are much older and somewhat ossified / clogged with bureaucracy.
But the US system is even older, and it still produces good results. Heck, the UK system is ancient, and the UK has a lot of innovation going on, both in tech and biotech.
I'll give a different example: Romania (mostly) skipped (A/V)DSL and went directly to optical fiber, which resulted in having the top-spot in download speed for a couple of years.
The US started from 100m ahead - the level Europe was at the time - so they already had a foundation - and (imo) made it easier to look ahead from atop a (100m) mound.
Here's some innovative American peanut butter to go with your pure jelly:
We didn't trump up anything about American individualism, ingenuity and innovation. Rather, a visiting European, de Toqueville, wrote about it extensively as early as 1835.
De la démocratie en Amérique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America
He also said
"...I have nowhere seen women occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked, ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply,—to the superiority of their women."
"Tocqueville noted that religion played a leading role in American life in the 1830s, due to its being constitutionally separated from government. Far from objecting to this situation, he observed that Americans found this disestablishment quite satisfactory, in contrast to France, with its outright antagonism between avowedly religious people and supporters of democracy."
no jelly here
Happy to have my privacy, no company snooping on me
's all good, man :)
Americans were richer than even Brits back when they were still Brits
The American colonies led Great Britain in purchasing power per capita from 1700, and possibly from 1650, until 1774, even counting slaves in the population
The common view that American per capita income did not overtake that of Britain until the start of the 20th century appears to be off the mark by two centuries or longer.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w19861
even counting slaves
This remark should leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. Obviously being immoral and exploiting human beings is an economic advantage. And excluding them in the census but benefitting from their work would be dehumanizing them even more.
It's an advantage for those doing the exploiting, but overall it's an economic disadvantage, if your per capita statistic includes the slaves when counting heads.
Okay now do the 1880s.
It seems like Americans understand just fine how much they benefited from post-war prosperity and the destruction of Europe WWII brought with it.
We'd have been better off without the war, though, in absolute terms. So much destruction and wasted output.
I suggest another vision: how many talents, students with potential, teachers etc we ALL lost in WWI and WWII? You know back than in most countries serving in the army was mandatory.
And it continues to this day with the Indian and Chinese immigrants to the US.
I'm also constantly reminded that there was a counterflow brain-drain, from the US to Europe, both before and after WWII, largely of African-Americans fleeing oppression not just in the US South, but throughout the country.
James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Nina Simone. Others who didn't necessarily emigrate to Europe did spend much time there: Paul Robeson, John Coltrane, Lillian Smith, Alain Locke, and Ethel Waters amongst them.
You can also see patterns in movement of creative and technical talent within the US. There is of course the Great Migration from the South to northern, mostly industrial cities. California collected creative and technical talent from across the country, to a much greater extent than already established and notable Eastern states with large cities (New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, ...). In some specific cases (the establishment of Hollywood), we know that lax patent enforcement and ready escape to Mexico was a strong draw for the early film industry against Edison's lawyers. I suspect that in addition to the much-ballyhooed physical climate, reduced social strictures, ease of land development, and rapidly-growing metro regions particularly near Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, contributed. There's also of course the WWII and post-war / Cold War military economy which played a tremendous role.
You also saw organisations such as RAND moving wholesale to the West in the 1950s, for a combination of factors: more space, closer to major aerospace operations. Entire families were shipped west by railroad.
My hypothesis is that intellectual and creative talent seek freedom, in both positive (opportunity) and avoidance of negative (oppression, suppression, abuse) senses. As much as we talk of capital being more mobile than labour, creative labour being concentrated in a few individuals is especially mobile, and quite sensitive to conditions of oppression. One obvious risk shares some parallels with a paradox of transportation infrastructure: as transportation improves, formerly greenfield / undeveloped regions become developed and land values explode such that further improvements in transportation become exceedingly expensive, both financially and politically. In the intellectual and creative realms, moats and ramparts, institutional rigidities, commercial and political allegiances, etc., emerge, which actively retard further progress.
The challenge is in identifying where new regions (in the physical and geographic sense) of opportunity might be emerging.
Turns out being surrounded by two massive oceans and friendly and much weaker nations is a great advantage,
An advantage that hasn't been put ti much use because once could make a strong point that things have been stagnant for 60 years.