In areas where a culture is rich in the sciences and the arts, and where intelligence is valued, people of highest intelligence and intensity of purpose thrive and make “genius-level” contributions. Most important is an environment of high personal autonomy, in which individuals are encouraged to create and are rewarded and celebrated for their achievements. Universities that encourage investigation, teach the young how to learn and are free from indoctrinationare vital.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Hungary was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had been formed in 1867 under the rule of Franz Joseph I. The cities of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda (ancient Buda) had been merged into the city of Budapest that would evolve into one of the most vibrant cities in the world. About one-fifth of its population consisted of Jewish émigrées who had fled persecution and sought a liberal environment in which they could pursue business and intellectual interests. Out of this intellectually fertile environment emerged five outstanding mathematicians/physicists: Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller. They were all Jewish and four of them were born in Budapest in the decade spanning 1898 to 1908. This group of five brilliant individuals would subsequently be described collectively as The Martians because their mental accomplishments in mathematics and physics created the perception that they were not earthlings.
All five of these men played a prominent role in the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb and taught us how to harness atomic energy. Von Neumann, in particular, made contributions to mathematics, game theory, and computer technology. The mental capacities of these brilliant men were spawned in the intellectually stimulating environment in Hungary during that era.
Silicon Valley in California, emerging prominently from the late 1960s onward, represents a comparable model of sustained technological innovation. Anchored by Stanford University and influenced by the proximity of the University of California, Berkeley, the region developed an institutional and cultural environment that promoted openness, knowledge exchange, and entrepreneurial risk-taking. Within this ecosystem, Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle in the Bay Area in 1977; Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed Google while doctoral students at Stanford; and Elon Musk, who left a Ph.D. program at Stanford, subsequently played a central role in the creation and leadership of several major technology firms, including PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink.
If we look much farther backward in time to the ancient Greek Civilization of Athens, we see the beginnings of a major awakening of the human mind. There were also periods in China, India and the Moslem world where education and intelligence were valued. So, if a society desires a highly productive and intelligent population, it must place a high value on educating its population, creating special programs for the gifted, and avoiding ideologies that destroy open inquiry. (For example, the Soviets discouraged the teaching of genetics to refute the genetic component of intelligence, believing it would destroy the egalitarian agenda.) All of us who live in a country where we are free to learn whatever we choose and have the tools to explore knowledge are the extremely fortunate minority in the history of human civilization.
