Ashkenazi Intelligence

Whether Ashkenazi Jews tend to have higher intelligence than other ethnic groups has been an occasional subject of scientific controversy.

A 2005 scientific paper, "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence", proposed that Jews as a group inherit higher verbal and mathematical intelligence with somewhat lower spikes in spatial intelligence than other ethnic groups, on the basis of inherited diseases and the peculiar economic situation of Jews in the Middle Ages. Opposing this hypothesis are explanations for the congenital illnesses in terms of the founder effect, explanations of intellectual successes by reference to Jewish culture's promotion of scholarship and learning, and doubts regarding whether a group difference in intelligence really exists.

One observational basis for inferring that Jews have high intelligence is their prevalence in intellectually demanding fields. While only about 2% of the U.S. population is of full Jewish descent, 27% of United States Nobel prize winners in the 20th century, 25% of Fields Medal winners, 25% of ACM Turing Award winners, 9 out of the 19 world chess champions, and a quarter of Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners have either full or partial Jewish ancestry.

A more direct approach is to measure intelligence with psychometric tests. Different studies have found different results, but most have found above-average verbal and mathematical intelligence in Jews, along with below-average spatial intelligence.

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