FAMILIES OF AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 509 



percentage of scientific men of high distinction, but the differences are 

 not so large as to be significant. 



As it is much easier to determine nationality than race, so occupa- 

 tion can be stated more readily than social position. It would be 

 desirable to know the social connections and incomes of the fathers 

 of scientific men at the period when their sons were educated, but euch 

 information is not at hand. Men in the same profession have very 

 different social environments; in manufacturing and trade a man may 

 be an artisan or a multi-millionaire. It is, however, clear that a major- 

 ity of scientific men come from the so-called middle and upper classes. 

 Not very far from half of them are supplied by the professional classes, 

 forming about one thirtieth of the population, and imdoubtedly they 

 tend to be sons of the more successful professional men. Under manu- 

 facturing and trade all sorts of occupations are included, but only a 

 small part of the fathers belong to the class of artisans and still fewer to 

 the class of clerks. Most of them own their own business, which may be 

 anything from a small shop in a university town^ to the control of a 

 railway system. Not a single scientific man is recorded as coming 

 from the class engaged in domestic service, nor is any known to be the 

 son of a day laborer, even of the higher grades. Agriculture includes 

 agricultural laborers, but the fathers of the scientific men usually 

 owned their own farms, and were probably in the main the farmers of 

 the better class with relatives among professional men. Our farming 

 population belongs chiefly to a yeoman class, not to a peasant class, 

 such as forms nine tenths of the population of Russia. 



The earlier studies of scientific men made by De Candolle and 

 Galton and the groups treated by Odin and Ellis yield results in regard 

 to the origin of men of performance comparable with those here given. 

 De Candolle^ found that of 100 foreign associates of the Paris Academy 

 of Sciences, 41 came from noble and wealthy families, 52- from the 

 middle class and 7 from the working class. Galton* found that of 96 

 contemporary leading men of science none came from the artisan and 

 peasant classes. Odin^ found that of 823 French men of letters, 65 

 per cent, came from the nobility and governing classes, 23 per cent, 

 from the professions, 12 per cent, from the commercial and middle 

 classes and 16 per cent, from the lower classes. Ellis^ found that of 829 



2 A notable case is of three brothers who have attained scientific distinction. 

 They obviously had inherited ability, but the opportunity to exhibit it in scientific 

 research was probably due to the fact that their father's shop was in a uni- 

 versity town. 



3"Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Si&cles," Genfeve, 1873. 



*" English Men of Science," London, 1874; New York, 1875. 



6 "Genfese des Grands Hommes, " Paris et Lausanne, 1895. An excellent ac- 

 count of Odin 's researches is given in Lester F. Ward 's ' ' Applied Sociology, ' ' 

 Boston and New York, 1906. 



6 "A Study of British Genius," London, 1904. 



