The Role of Family and Opportunity in Creating Nobel Laureates
❓If talent is evenly distributed and opportunities are equal, Nobel Laureates should come from diverse backgrounds. But is that the case?
🧠Paul Novosad, Sam Asher, Catriona Farquharson, and Eni Iljazi published a paper that examined the childhoods of Nobel Prize winners in sciences to determine the conditions of their upbringing.
What do we know?
✅ Socioeconomic Backgrounds: On average, Nobel Laureates come from families in the 94th percentile of global income, indicating that about 90% of potential scientific talent worldwide is not reaching its full potential.
✅Outliers Exist: While most laureates come from relatively affluent backgrounds, there are exceptions
✅Business owners (small and large), doctors, professors, and engineers are among the most common parental occupations for Nobel Laureates.
✅Gender Barriers: From cohorts between 1835 and 1975, only 28 out of 735 laureates are women, who often came from more elite backgrounds
✅Regional Analysis: The United States has been more effective at nurturing top scientists from non-elite backgrounds compared to other regions, challenging expectations about Eastern Europe’s role.
✅Despite 125 years of Nobel Prize history, the socioeconomic origins of laureates have not diversified significantly
Winnicott’s mission in life was to democratize the concept of “good enough parenting”, not brilliant or perfect, just good enough. No child needs a perfect parent. All we need is good enough parents. The job of a parent is to disappoint a child bit by bit into adult realities. Obsession with perfection harms the child and creates an artificial relationship between parents and children. You want a real relationship premised on truth.
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