Well, the Martians were all Hungarians, and that's to do with physics and perhaps with chemistry as well.Skip wrote: ↑Mon Jun 18, 2018 10:03 pm
Or maybe math is cheaper to teach than physics or chemistry, so it's more accessible, so more kids in poor countries can achieve success in that discipline. There is also a cultural influence to encourage some kinds of accomplishment rather than others.
Myself, I am a total mathophobe and can't sing or dance to save my life.
Of course, such things as national accomplishments change over time, as well, even though the language remains the same. Like, they haven't been able to qualify for FIFA in donkey's years. And I'm pretty sure the kids' legs didn't grow any shorter.
And in the eighties 53 percent of all commercial computer programs were developed in Hungary.
The reason we don't hear about math geniuses any more is that it's tired news. But Palko Erdos and Endre Szemeredi are both contemporaries of ours.
You're right in that cutting-edge physics can't be achieved in poor countries. To conduct a reasonably cutting-edge experiment costs trillions of dollars. Hungary's economy is not strong enough for that-- heck, they couldn't even feed drive-through immigrants form Syria en route to Sweden. Heck, they can't even feed their own population properly.