The British, the Germans and the Irish: A Look at How Traditions Survive Emigration
by Mike Kimel
The British, the Germans and the Irish: A Look at How Traditions Survive Emigration
Between 1921 and the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, about 70% of those admitted into the US came from the UK, Ireland, and Germany. In a roundabout way, I want to discuss what that has meant for the US. But first, I’d like to regale you, the reader, with a paragraph long digression.
Because I never really developed an attention span until I was about 40, I didn’t quite learned to study properly and ended up having to wing my way through school. So while I enjoy what I do tremendously, a part of me occasionally thinks wistfully that in an alternate universe, I might have become a physicist. Perhaps as a result, I pay a dilettante’s attention to the hard and life sciences. Here or there, it’s enough for me to recite the journalist’s summary of what is going on in a field of research though I won’t pretend that conveys any real understanding.
Still, from an “everybody needs a hobby” perspective, I can name a lot of scientists. More precisely, I can name a lot of German scientists, and most of them would be physicists. I can name a lot of British scientists as well. But what about Irish scientists? Well, Robert Boyle, truly one of the gods, if lower cased, comes to mind. There is also, well, (cough to clear throat), um… crickets. So I went to Google which sent me to someone’s list of the top 10 Irish scientists of all time. On this list, Boyle comes in at number two, after Ernest Walton, described as the only Irish science Nobel laureate. To quote the article, “He and John Cockroft “split the atom” (disintegrated lithium) using the first successfully built particle accelerator, built by Walton,at Cambridge in 1931.” (I note that Cambridge, of course, is not in Ireland.)
Number three on the list is Shackleford – a great explorer, no doubt, but not a scientist at all. George Boole is fifth on the list. He too was not a scientist. By this I mean no disrespect – Boole was a very fine mathematician. Anyway, the point is, historically great Irish scientists have been more scarce than great German or British scientists. That probably indicates that the Irish produced fewer scientists, in general, than Britain or Germany on an absolute or per capita basis. It also appears to still be true today.
(As an aside, greater or fewer world class scientists is not as related to population as you might think. I lived much of my life in Latin America and the only well-known Latin American scientist that comes to mind as I write this is Oswaldo Cruz. Furthermore, I believe he is primarily known for the institute based in Rio named after him. Without looking him up, I cannot tell you what he did that was notable, and my bet is, neither can you.)
But Ireland does produce writers. Great writers. Good writers. Lousy writers. Magnificent writers. Even, occasionally, sober writers. There’s Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett and a zillion and a half others. (Joyce doesn’t do it for me, but YMMV.) So for the last however many hundred years, the Irish haven’t produced scientists the way that Britain and Germany have, but the Irish have generated a lot of writers. (This is not to say the Brits and the Germans have slacked off in the writing department either, mind you.) Call that tendency to generate writers rather scientists whatever you’d like, but culture is as good a word for it as any. And that culture, or the cultural difference between Ireland and the UK and Germany has lasted at least since the industrial age.
Now, the interesting thing is that the culture or cultural difference doesn’t appear to be entirely geographically specific. It seems to carry to places and times where you find people of Irish, British or German descent. American scientists with English or Scottish last names are a dime a dozen. American scientists with German last names are probably a nickel a dozen. Think Edison, Franklin, the Wright brothers, Oppie, Pauling, E O Wilson, Watson and (I would guess) Alan Guth (to throw on a recent addition). That’s keeping it very short. Include immigrants and now we’re talking Einstein, Crick, Mayr and Alexander Graham Bell. A list for which someone like Hans Bethe is qualified but doesn’t qualify qualifies as one hell of a list.
But for Irish American scientists… I drew a blank. So I looked it up and ended up at Wikipedia. Here’s what their list looks like as of this writing:
Michael Collins – astronaut with Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 missions
Jim Collins – Rhodes Scholar, MacArthur genius, bioengineer and inventor
John Philip Holland – inventor of the submarine; Fenian
Charles McBurney – medical pioneer
Charles Townes – physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate
First off, Michael Collins was not a scientist. He was a test-pilot, an astronaut, and later an administrator. None of that is bad, but it doesn’t make him a scientist. I’ve heard a few stories about Charlie Townes and he certainly was a first scientist but I haven’t heard him compared to Linus Pauling or Albert Einstein either. I haven’t heard of the rest – they seem like interesting people, no doubt smarter and more productive than I, but pound for pound we probably aren’t talking about Thomas Edison or James Watson.
Now Irish American writers on the other hand… well, here we have Poe, Fitzgerald, London, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and sooo many more. Even if the list stopped with the names I mentioned (and as an aside, I think a couple of them were sober a lot of the time), heck, even if it stopped at Poe (not sober), it would be a list of formidable contenders for pretty much anything. Only for completeness, I will add that of course, the American descendants of British and German citizens have also generated magnificent authors as well.
So where am I going with this? Well, it appears that some cultural traits seem to carry, both geographically and temporally. I note this seems to apply more widely than just Europe and the USA. Having spent a bit of time in Argentina, I note that it too is home to a fair number of German, British, and Irish descended individuals. I believe the same pattern (Irish = writers, but not scientists) applies there. Wikipedia’s list of Irish Argentines may not, of course, be definitive, but while it includes a number of writers and a couple of doctors, unless I’m missing something, it includes no scientists.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no impediment, legal or otherwise, to the Irish people or their descendants becoming scientists. Members of the Irish diaspora have been in the US (and Argentina and who knows where else) for a long time now, and yet, relative to say German and UK descendants, they produce relative few scientists per writer. Just like the home country. So here is an example of a transplanted culture nevertheless lasting a long time.
A few notes in closing. First, the Irish, British, and Germans aren’t the only groups to behave in this way. For example,
More than half a million women and girls in the U.S. are estimated to be affected or at risk of FGM, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), a nonprofit organization that released statistics on FGM earlier this year. The number of those at risk has more than doubled in roughly the past decade, according to the PRB.
Officials from various organizations say the main reasons include population growth, and the fact that more families are immigrating to America, and bringing their traditions with them.
I would venture to guess the Irish diaspora doesn’t play a prominent part in this particular practice. I would even double down and state that the descendants of British and Germans of a few hundred years ago probably also aren’t the target audience for FGM either. I would reckon the bulk of the FGM enthusiasts in the US either emigrated from countries where it is practiced, or are descended from those who did.
Second, there are exceptions to the scenario noted in this post. There are groups that develop new traditions, or abandon old ones upon emigration. (Well, kinda sorta, and maybe less than you think.) How that happens, why, under what conditions, and to whom, will be covered in a later post.
Implications of all of this will also come in later posts.
Great post, Mike. My dad’s parents came over from Ireland in the early 1900’s, my Mom was born in Glasgow, so I think about DNA a bit. Just sent off my sample to 23 and me for more info.
I too like to read about science. I find Science magazine to be very helpful, but I usually tend to get lost after about a paragraph. Lately have read both of the Craig Venter books, really good reads. The first, “A Life Decoded” goes into his quest to map out the human genome. The second, “Life at the Speed of Light”, describes the program to create synthetic DNA.
Because we are in an election year, I’ve been wondering about the cultural traits that promote voting. Why do African Americans have the highest voting rate at 66% and Hispanics the lowest at 48%? Is it religion, education, culture?
well, i won’t comment about the topic except to say it’s at best a waste of time and at worst an invitation to racism.
by the way, you forgot the great Sumerian scientists.
and if you read the popular explanations of physics at least, you won’t learn anything.
Jim Hannan,
Thx. As to the voting patterns you observed, I don’t know. Perhaps African American voting rates are inflated due to two elections with Obama and because they are an urban population (i.e., they live in relatively close proximity to the voting booth as compared to rural populations that have to drive). Just a guess though and I might be way off.
Coberly,
Sorry you feel that way. I figure there is always talk about more students studying STEM and here we have a case study of three similar groups where one seems relatively low on STEM. To me that is worth trying to understand.
Sumerians were omitted primarily because they weren’t one of the main immigrant groups to the US at that time.
mike
i have great sympathy for you when beverly yells at you because you do not use words exactly the way she uses them, learned at the knee of god.
still, i try to tell you the effect your words… paragraphs… arguments are heard by normal people in America today. they sound like The Bell Curve. They will be taken by the usual racists as evidence for their theories of race. They will be taken by members of the victim class as evidence of white racism.
I personally think you are dead wrong about the causes of cop-shootings. And while you are probably right about the inevitable injustice of racial quotas, to me it is a conversation not worth having… given the reason stated above.
no animus intended. just sharing information in a time of war.
Coberly,
I appreciate your comments. I am putting a lot of effort into writing this in a way that doesn’t conform with those who (to use your term) focus on some sort of theories of race. I will note that I have a specific destination in mind with these posts which will make everything clear. I hope at that point it will be obvious why I was willing to go through all of this, but the long and short of it is that I think there is something very important at stake, namely our collective futures.
One point five quibbles though. I don’t think I’ve mentioned racial quotas. It is possible it slipped my mind. However, discussing them as an injustice seems unlike me. If I discussed racial quotas at all, I would imagine I would have been more likely to discuss whether they increase or decrease efficiency in the economy.
I note that avoiding discussion of race/ethnicity entirely makes some problems worse. As an example, see this story in the Washington Post. The title tells the story: “French Jews: The first victims in a France where everyone is now in the crosshairs.”
The piece indicates that for years there has been increasing anti-Semitic violence in France, and that in recent years the violence has spilled over and is now affecting non-Jews as well. But it never really says where the violence is coming from. There is mention toward the end that “France [is] increasingly in the cross-hairs of the Islamic State” but even then, it comes across as if the violence is erupting out of the ether, sort of like spontaneous combustion, but far more common, and more violently. If stating a severe problem is prohibited, the problem cannot be solved.
mike
well, good luck with all that. i can’t see where you are going with this. all i can do is tell you how it looks from here so far.
of course we need to talk about problems, but we need to be careful how we talk about some of them. or not. no one is really listening to us.
My father was a scientist and his name is Brady. And I have a cousin also named Brady who was at one stage a student of his, and is now a professor.
The name came via Scotland though (and I’m an Australian). Do you have some actually statistics to back up your musing?
And what about Tim Flannery? (Australian scientist, Irish last name).
P.S. Though Tim Flannery is of course a great writer.
Reason,
As noted in the post, I checked google and Wikipedia. There are also a few Irish American museums scattered across the country and I checked out the websites for some of them. Nobody seems to keep statistics, but none of the sources point to a vast reservoir of Irish American scientists either. Results are completely different than searching for Irish American authors or German American physicists where there appears to be a large population out in the open.
Note that I certainly not disputing that Irish descent precludes one from becoming a scientist and was clear about that in the post. There are no doubt members of the Irish diaspora who are scientists. What was noted in the post is that the proportion of great scientists to great authors seems to be much lower for the Irish (diaspora and home population) than for those if British and German ancestry. I have spent enough time looking to conclude this is true. If you have evidence this conclusion is wrong and that Google, Wikipedia, and the various sites for enthusiasts of Irish American culture are holding out on the rest of us, by all means let me know. I am trying to understand the way the world works and if I have a bad assumption I would like to correct it to be more accurate going forward.
Somewhat off on a tangent:
Perhaps the reverse question should also be asked:
What in a culture encourages scientific attitudes?
What aspect of a culture encourages great writing?
Certainly, a culture with a great tradition of story-telling will generate writers, as they have a lot of material to draw on, and their imagination will be encouraged (it attracts more listeners and readers).
A scientific world view is more likely encouraged, if the culture includes the view that nature is knowable and that one can find out about it by observation and experiment, it is not just the will of a god written down in some book representing an absolute truth and transmitted by authority. Most important for science is a culture of robust discussion, where arguments are settled by evidence, not (secular or ecclesiastic) authority. Protestantism may have helped to promote science in north-western Europe, as it also embodies the idea that one should find out by oneself rather than rely on the word of priests or religious authorities. Then the successes of science-produced technology in north-western Europe assured that scientific arguments were settled based on what works, not any authority. But in those place, where religion is paramount, the people will get the impression that all is settled by the truths revealed by their religion, and these religious truths are all that is worth finding out. Hence there is little science in theocratic countries (as long as the theocrats are successful in dominating education and general attitudes ). There are of course exceptions, like religious people pursuing science, e.g. Mendel, LeMaitre.. The biggest one is the success and number of Jewish scientists; it can be explained by the fact that part of Jewish education is to learn that famous rabbis disagreed on the proper reading of the Talmud, and had lengthy arguments about it, as opposed to fundamentalists in other religions. (Presumably Einstein was told sometime that he would have made a fine Talmudic scholar.)
Regarding the observations of relative prevalence of Irish/British/German scientists in the U.S.:
– Certainly, home-grown attitudes will survive with immigrants for a generation or two, before being assimilated into the dominant culture.
– Listing numbers for famous scientists is listing numbers of the past,In the past, Ireland was more religious and less developed. I could imagine that current attitudes of the Irish (both there and in the U.S.) may be different, less religious and more inclined towards science.
– Lastly, the populations of Germany and the U.K, and the number of immigrants from there, are probably bigger than the population of Ireland and immigrants from there, so the appropriate ratios are relevant, not the absolute numbers,
A In Ca,
They say great minds think alike. You, on the other hand, have the misfortune of thinking like me. Either that or you have broken into my home and stolen the notes for my next few posts on the topic.
After the beatings I have been taking for these posts, it is gratifying to see someone else take the same set of facts and end reason through to the same place I did. Thank you, and I mean it sincerely.
One quibble – in the post, I discussed both absolute numbers and relative proportions of writers v. scientists.
I am a descendant of Jonathan Millar (Miller) of Bertie County, North Carolina and I descend also from the Earls of Lennox. I am also related to Ralph Wolfe Cowan, a Scottish American who is my third cousin and a well known artist. My grandmother was Essie Cowan, whose mother was Elizabeth Emily Wynne who descended from the House of Gwynnedd and the Williams Wynn family. Also through her, I am a descendant of Lady Joan Plantagenent of Snowden and Wales who was a daughter of King John of England. Elizabeth Wynne’s husband was Charles Edward Cowan, my great-grandfather. I hope Scotland will vote for independence from the United Kingdom; however, I believe they keep the Queen as Elizabeth I of Scotland and remain in the British Commonwealth of Nations.