Here I investigate whether the differences in number of notable people across Europe can be attributed to differences in population sizes. In an earlier blog post, I tracked the European geographical distribution of over 5,000 notable people in science born between 1000 and 1850 AD. I have also
Given the bloody history of Eastern Europe this map comes of no surprise. More interesting would be a look into the correlations between notable people and historical GDP.
Jan 5, 2023·edited Jan 6, 2023Liked by Inquisitive Bird
Funny enough, the low-genius-density/lower-performing areas of poland are actually disproportionately the areas they got from germany after WW1. Here's how things were from 1901-2018, which also seems to roughly line up with your pre-1850 heatmaps:
I'd have to see your list of notable people. There's notable and then there's notable. :) Also, different areas had their "golden age" at different times, and I would think you'd have to factor in their population levels and wealth in those periods, not necessarily in 1850 to get a more complete picture. However, just as a generality I would say that since the Middle Ages there was a corridor of innovation, etc., which ran from northern Germany and their sea ports in the north, Holland/Belgium, down through to Central Italy and spread west from there. I believe it was because of trade connections running from the east all the way north. New ideas traveled that trade corridor. I don't think it can be down to unified, stable governments, lack of corruption, and relatively long periods of peace, because none of those things apply to Italy.
Factors influencing differences, • Relative Freedom • Fewer publications translated from Eastern languages to Western languages • Individual longevity • Stability and reliability of government institutions • Corruption.
"We have decided who's notable based on number of English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish wikipedia articles.
We have found out that English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Scandinavian speaking countries have way more notable people than other countries."
I would expect some distortion from the dataset, which is based on various Western European-language Wikipedias. Not enough to change the whole picture (even a casual student of history would know that Western Europe accomplished a lot more science-wise than Eastern Europe per capita pre-1850), but the specific numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Likewise, population in 1850 doesn't accurately measure population over the preceding 850 years - off the top of my head, the UK and Russia had booming populations, while France was comparatively stagnant.
One oddity is that western France apparently produced fewer notable people than eastern France. The Rhine River tends to be central to the most culturally productive segment of Europe.
Consider the printing press. Banned in Ottoman empire territory on right but very available, and used for vernacular bibles in the green parts. The bibles took literacy to the people. literacy is key, i submit.
It would have been interesting to use a log-log approach, to adjust for the effects of small population sizes in some countries in europe when it comes to notable people(by definition they are fairly rare relative to other people). Emil used it in the mental sports paper(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331859319_Is_National_Mental_Sport_Ability_a_Sign_of_Intelligence_An_Analysis_of_the_Top_Players_of_12_Mental_Sports), and I've done some analsyis with the Nature Index generally showing it as a superior measure to deal with nonlinearly etc(correlates at 0.85 with national IQ). A historical analysis of literacy and (especially) numeracy(age heaping, which seems to precede literacy, have a decent disconection from it, and be less influenced by formal schooling) would also be interesting to see(would expect a decent correlation, especially given that N-S and W-E differences in these cognitive skills are hundreds of years old( Quantifying Quantitative Literacy:Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital).
Given the bloody history of Eastern Europe this map comes of no surprise. More interesting would be a look into the correlations between notable people and historical GDP.
Funny enough, the low-genius-density/lower-performing areas of poland are actually disproportionately the areas they got from germany after WW1. Here's how things were from 1901-2018, which also seems to roughly line up with your pre-1850 heatmaps:
http://baryon.be/nobelprize/
I'd have to see your list of notable people. There's notable and then there's notable. :) Also, different areas had their "golden age" at different times, and I would think you'd have to factor in their population levels and wealth in those periods, not necessarily in 1850 to get a more complete picture. However, just as a generality I would say that since the Middle Ages there was a corridor of innovation, etc., which ran from northern Germany and their sea ports in the north, Holland/Belgium, down through to Central Italy and spread west from there. I believe it was because of trade connections running from the east all the way north. New ideas traveled that trade corridor. I don't think it can be down to unified, stable governments, lack of corruption, and relatively long periods of peace, because none of those things apply to Italy.
Factors influencing differences, • Relative Freedom • Fewer publications translated from Eastern languages to Western languages • Individual longevity • Stability and reliability of government institutions • Corruption.
Also this fascinating insight. Thank you.
"We have decided who's notable based on number of English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish wikipedia articles.
We have found out that English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Scandinavian speaking countries have way more notable people than other countries."
Really shocking.
I would expect some distortion from the dataset, which is based on various Western European-language Wikipedias. Not enough to change the whole picture (even a casual student of history would know that Western Europe accomplished a lot more science-wise than Eastern Europe per capita pre-1850), but the specific numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Likewise, population in 1850 doesn't accurately measure population over the preceding 850 years - off the top of my head, the UK and Russia had booming populations, while France was comparatively stagnant.
One oddity is that western France apparently produced fewer notable people than eastern France. The Rhine River tends to be central to the most culturally productive segment of Europe.
Consider the printing press. Banned in Ottoman empire territory on right but very available, and used for vernacular bibles in the green parts. The bibles took literacy to the people. literacy is key, i submit.
It would have been interesting to use a log-log approach, to adjust for the effects of small population sizes in some countries in europe when it comes to notable people(by definition they are fairly rare relative to other people). Emil used it in the mental sports paper(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331859319_Is_National_Mental_Sport_Ability_a_Sign_of_Intelligence_An_Analysis_of_the_Top_Players_of_12_Mental_Sports), and I've done some analsyis with the Nature Index generally showing it as a superior measure to deal with nonlinearly etc(correlates at 0.85 with national IQ). A historical analysis of literacy and (especially) numeracy(age heaping, which seems to precede literacy, have a decent disconection from it, and be less influenced by formal schooling) would also be interesting to see(would expect a decent correlation, especially given that N-S and W-E differences in these cognitive skills are hundreds of years old( Quantifying Quantitative Literacy:Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital).