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Comment by mollerhoj | Hacker News Reader

The graph reveals what happened to the academic class during the darkest part of Germanys history: It looks like most of the mathematicians fled to the US! Also, I thought Russia produced many more matematicans than shown but maybe I'm just making false assumptions

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Under Peter, Russia imported a lot of great minds, who then fled when things started to get horrible. They've produced some greats, but shockingly few when you consider how large the country their working with is.

Russia is actually not that large population-wise.

More than 140 million is pretty huge, and that's modern Russia, not what it used to be with all of its empire, and later satellite states.

Less than half the population of the US, tho', and only double the UK, you have to compare like with like.

In what way does that relate to the original point? Russia doesn't have the record of producing mathematicians at a rate of a much smaller country like Germany.

You asserted that Russia should produce more mathematicians because it is large. But large mainly empty land area will not have that effect.

You're going backwards. We already did the "per capita" thing, now you're pretending that you didn't understand what "large" meant in the first place?

I see that you have some kind of problem with what's been said about the production of great mathematical minds in Russia, so why don't you offer something contrary to the assertions made so far? Rhetorical gaming is really not an effective tool to make your point.

You said:

shockingly few when you consider how large the country their working with is

I replied that the country isn't actually that large in terms of people, so your point is invalid. Now you seem to be saying that empty land should produce more mathematicians.

Also, it's "they're".

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