上次写了女性科学家，这次谈谈犹太人的智商，都是很有争议的话题。我最近收到《新发现》的几本期刊，其中有一段谈犹太人的，说犹太人占美国人口3%，却占了美国的诺奖得主的27％，图灵奖得主的25％。

我在网上查了一下，得知去年Journal of Biosocial Science 6月份发表了一篇研究Ashkenazi Jews的基因的文章，几项结果如下：

They have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group.
Their intelligence advantage is genetic.
Their intelligence advantage is recent.
Jews as a whole are not of above-average intelligence, just the Ashkenazi.
Ashkenazi intelligence is a result of natural selection.

要说清楚，Ashkenazi Jews是起源于中欧和北欧的犹太人，他们的平均智商高出欧洲人的平均智商12－15。高智商来源于他们在中世纪从事的特殊职业，如经商、放高利贷。

下面是我从Wikipedia查到的一段话：

According to many studies, Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average intelligence of any ethnic group as measured by IQ, leading East Asians, who also perform highly in IQ. Many of these studies indicate that the primary Ashkenazi advantage is in verbal reasoning and the East Asian advantage in spatial reasoning.

Ashkenazi Jews also perform highly in correlated areas. For example, while only 0.25% of the world population is Jewish, Jewish scientists make up 28% of Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics, and have accounted for more than half of world chess champions.[12] In the U.S., Ashkenazi Jews represent 2% of the population, but have won 40% of the US Nobel Prizes in science, and 25% of the ACM Turing Awards (the Nobel-equivalent in computer science). A significant decline in the number of Nobel prizes awarded to Europeans and a corresponding increase in the number of prizes awarded to US citizens occurred at the same time as Nazi persecutions of Jews during the 1930s and the Holocaust during the 1940s.

以上的第一段话很有意思，东亚人的智商仅低于Ashkenazi Jews，东亚人的空间想象好，而Ashkenazi Jews长于语言推理。

中世纪之后著名的犹太人包括马克思、弗洛伊德、爱因斯坦，最近有一个博客将他们列入史上20个大天才。他的20名天才还包括中世纪之前的摩西和耶稣。

弦论界的大老很多人是犹太人：Witten, Gross, Polyakov, Seiberg, Susskind, Polchinski……这份名单让你觉得不是犹太人在弦论中的成功率不会太高。

然而我不能确定以上都是Ashkenazi Jews，我好像记得很久很久以前Banks曾经说过他们家来自北欧，过去是做银行，难怪叫Banks。还有，Friedan也是北欧犹太人，他现在比较沉寂了，他的妈妈可是美国有名的女权运动家。

犹太人的团结和好斗是有名的，所以我一个师弟提起犹太人就愤愤不平，以为他们有时太过分。

最后说一下在我们中国人圈子内不会引起争议的猜想：最近中国的经济发展是不是与我们的空间想象力有关？

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补记：忽然想起我在科大读硕士时的同学方东萍，科大少年班毕业，硕士毕业后到了北师大，再后来就出国了。有一次在芝加哥大学不期而遇，那时她转学统计了。我觉得遗憾的是她结婚后请我们去她家过圣诞，因故没有去成。

多年后，我回国了，才知道她原来是犹太人，来自河南郑州。回想起来，除了鼻子，她长得一点也不像犹太人。