FAMILIES OF AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



505 



Table I. Nationality of the Par- 

 ents OP American Men op 

 Science 



I. Origin, Heredity and Performance 



In the previous articles statistics were given in regard to the birth- 

 place of the scientific men, and data are now at hand in regard to the 

 nationality and race of their parents. Of the thousand scientific men 

 first selected 126 were born abroad — 34 in Canada, 38 in Great Britain 

 and 19 in Germany. Table I. gives 

 the nationality of the parents of 

 917 leading scientific men. Six 

 hundred and twenty-eight, or more 

 than two thirds, have both parents 

 of native American (United States) 

 birth, 23 others have an American 

 father and 42 an American mother, 

 foreign men having American 

 women more frequently than the 

 reverse. In 165 cases both parents 

 are foreign born and of the same 

 nationality. Including Americans 

 there are 124 marriages in which 

 the nationality of the parents was 

 mixed, but they were largely 

 British. The American-born par- 

 ents are mainly of British and 

 New England descent; of foreign- 

 born parents, 137 fathers and an equal number of mothers are 

 English, Scotch, Irish or Canadian. Germany contributes 77 fathers 

 and 66 mothers. Other nations contribute in all 51 fathers and 44 

 mothers — fairly equally distributed among jSTorwegians, Swedes, Rus- 

 sians, Dutch, French and Swiss, with several from Denmark, Italy and 

 Japan. The parents of American men of science are thus predominantly 

 British- American, with an admixture of nearly 8 per cent, of Germans 

 and about 5 per cent, from other nationalities. 



Twelve and six tenths per cent, of our leading scientific men are 

 foreign born, 12.6 per cent, are native born of foreign-bom parents, 

 and 7.1 per cent, have one foreign-bom parent. In the general popu- 

 lation of the United States 14 per cent, of the people are foreign born, 

 13.5 have both parents foreign born and 6.7 have one parent foreign- 

 born. The foreign born and those of foreign-bom parentage thus con- 

 tribute less, but only slightly less, than the native population to scien- 

 tific productivity. There is a great difference in the different national- 

 ities. Those bora in Great Britain contribute 1.8 per cent to the popu- 

 lation and 3.4 per cent, to our scientific men; Germany contributes 2.7 

 per cent, to the population and 1.9 per cent, to the scientific men; 

 Eussia 1.7 to the population and 0.6 to the scientific men; Italy 1.5 to 



