Lots, considering the base rates involved. The famous example of a compilation would be Galton’s Hereditary Genius study, and of course, Galton himself, one of the most important statisticians, was the half-cousin of the Darwin, and both were grandchildren of Erasmus Darwin. A read of a Freeman Dyson op-ed reminds me that his son, George Dyson, is one of the most distinguished historians of technology, and earlier this year I was (not that) surprised to learn that the late lamented Oliver Sacks was the cousin of Robert Aumann. Then there are instances like the Bernoullis (or to continue the B theme albeit outside of science, the Bachs). I was reading a book on the Global Burden of Disease and its central figure, Murray, has a father who was also a doctor and made a breakthrough in treating an African disease. William Sidis’s father was, unfortunately for him, himself something of a genius with eccentric ideas about education. Continuing the Eastern European theme, we have the Polgars, the product of an eccentric experiment which successfully proved that, amazingly, you can breed two smart people and get more smart people. And so on. The family connections are all over the place once you start keeping an eye out. (Jewish people particularly enjoy joking about this.)
And often you will note that even the ones who come from ‘humble’ backgrounds will actually be well-educated or in skilled occupations or show clear familial signs of giftedness—the father will often be a failed inventor, or a competent but obscure engineer, or will have been blacklisted over politics, or the mother will be a schoolteacher in an era where that was the highest profession available to a smart woman or she wrote novels on the side or her children will remember her creativity in devising clever poems for special occasions, etc.
If you think about it in terms of distributions, it makes a good deal of sense. Eminent families have a very high genetic and shared-environment mean, but even with the odds very much in one’s favor, they only have a (very) few members and so can’t make up more than a fraction of all high-achievers. The larger bulk of bright but not extraordinarily gifted families have poorer odds for their kids, but there’s so many of them that their lucky highest-scorers will make up most of the high-achievers. To put a more modern spin: almost all subjects in SMPY will get advanced degrees and make major contributions, but only a few people getting advanced degrees and making major contributions will be SMPYers.
(One issue is that families get spread over multiple surnames—how are you supposed to know that Galton and Darwin are related unless you’d read up on them? And there are so many fields to specialize in that a highly capable family will tend to have representatives spread over multiple fields—the Bernoullis are a bit unusual in having multiple luminaries in almost the exact same field which makes their collective impact so obvious. A more typical pattern is one would be a statesman, another a great lawyer, another a poet, another a doctor, etc, which dilutes considerably the ocular trauma. Someone interested in math won’t appreciate the XYZ’s influence on international relations, and vice-versa.)
I remember reading somewhere that talent often runs in families (with examples, which unfortunately I forgot)… but now I think the original article was probably about things like musical talent.
Although if we go looking for descendants rather than ancestors...
Irène Joliot-Curie (12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French scientist, the daughter of Marie Curie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date.[1] Both children of the Joliot-Curies, Hélène and Pierre, are also esteemed scientists.[2]
What makes a birth notable?
Pretty much the same sort of life as makes the death notable.
The person accomplished notable things?
The person is a next reincarnation of someone from the notable deaths section.
(Notability is 20% hereditary, 30% environment, and 50% karma.)
On a second thought, when a notable person has a child, that should also be celebrated.
How many notable scientists are the children of notable scientists?
Lots, considering the base rates involved. The famous example of a compilation would be Galton’s Hereditary Genius study, and of course, Galton himself, one of the most important statisticians, was the half-cousin of the Darwin, and both were grandchildren of Erasmus Darwin. A read of a Freeman Dyson op-ed reminds me that his son, George Dyson, is one of the most distinguished historians of technology, and earlier this year I was (not that) surprised to learn that the late lamented Oliver Sacks was the cousin of Robert Aumann. Then there are instances like the Bernoullis (or to continue the B theme albeit outside of science, the Bachs). I was reading a book on the Global Burden of Disease and its central figure, Murray, has a father who was also a doctor and made a breakthrough in treating an African disease. William Sidis’s father was, unfortunately for him, himself something of a genius with eccentric ideas about education. Continuing the Eastern European theme, we have the Polgars, the product of an eccentric experiment which successfully proved that, amazingly, you can breed two smart people and get more smart people. And so on. The family connections are all over the place once you start keeping an eye out. (Jewish people particularly enjoy joking about this.)
And often you will note that even the ones who come from ‘humble’ backgrounds will actually be well-educated or in skilled occupations or show clear familial signs of giftedness—the father will often be a failed inventor, or a competent but obscure engineer, or will have been blacklisted over politics, or the mother will be a schoolteacher in an era where that was the highest profession available to a smart woman or she wrote novels on the side or her children will remember her creativity in devising clever poems for special occasions, etc.
If you think about it in terms of distributions, it makes a good deal of sense. Eminent families have a very high genetic and shared-environment mean, but even with the odds very much in one’s favor, they only have a (very) few members and so can’t make up more than a fraction of all high-achievers. The larger bulk of bright but not extraordinarily gifted families have poorer odds for their kids, but there’s so many of them that their lucky highest-scorers will make up most of the high-achievers. To put a more modern spin: almost all subjects in SMPY will get advanced degrees and make major contributions, but only a few people getting advanced degrees and making major contributions will be SMPYers.
(One issue is that families get spread over multiple surnames—how are you supposed to know that Galton and Darwin are related unless you’d read up on them? And there are so many fields to specialize in that a highly capable family will tend to have representatives spread over multiple fields—the Bernoullis are a bit unusual in having multiple luminaries in almost the exact same field which makes their collective impact so obvious. A more typical pattern is one would be a statesman, another a great lawyer, another a poet, another a doctor, etc, which dilutes considerably the ocular trauma. Someone interested in math won’t appreciate the XYZ’s influence on international relations, and vice-versa.)
I remember reading somewhere that talent often runs in families (with examples, which unfortunately I forgot)… but now I think the original article was probably about things like musical talent.
Quick look at Wikipedia:
Marie Curie—parents: teachers
Albert Einstein—father: salesman / electrician; mother: ?housewife?
Alan Turing—father: civil servant; mother: ?housewife?
Okay, you have a point.
Although if we go looking for descendants rather than ancestors...
Yes.
(I see that LessWrong has twigged to the fact that this was a stupid joke and not a serious proposal, and I accept the downkarma.)