“Why are Jews so represented in science and the medical professions?”

So asks Nobel Prize winner Roald Hoffmann in this special message to those attending Limmud FSU last week in Truskates, Ukraine.

[eJP note: video begins in Russian, changes to English 28 seconds in; we encourage you to listen through to the end]

At least 180 Jews and persons of partial Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 22 percent of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 1929, and constituting 36 percent of all U.S. recipients during the same period. In chemistry, economics, medicine and physics, the corresponding world and U.S. percentages are 27 percent and 39 percent.

Roald Hoffmann was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1981. He currently teaches at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

This year in celebration of the prize-winners of Jewish origin, born in the Former Soviet Union and Israel, Limmud FSU has chosen as its’ theme, Limmud Nobel.