Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Does this atlas rank groups by IQ, race or nation?
No. Pathways and evidence stay individual. Scores are browsing aids — never group biological or racial ranks.
What did SMPY change?
Above-level SAT at 12–13 revealed residual differences among the already high, and later adult outcomes in STEM.
Are olympiad medals a gift assay?
They measure contest craft under a syllabus. Coaching density (China, Korea, Russia физмат) is already in the score.
Did Ramanujan prove genes are everything?
He also had the Cambridge correspondence and a tradition of temple-school calculation. A jagged profile, not a racial parable.
Is fast arithmetic the talent?
It is one visible skill. Proof, modelling and spatial insight can be quiet in timed tests.
Do girls “lack” maths talent?
This page will not run that folk story. Participation, stereotype and coaching explain much of historic gaps; we do not rank sexes as essences.
The people below are a history set for mathematical talent, diverse in country and gender, not a league table.
Years and countries are real. “Why” is a file label, not a rank. No group IQ story is licensed by any of these lives.
Exemplars
- Srinivasa Ramanujan 1887–1920 · India
Jagged, enormous invention Notebooks and Cambridge letters — a profile, not a racial parable.
- Emmy Noether 1882–1935 · Germany
Structural algebra A late-recognised architect of modern algebra, barred from ordinary posts for sex and politics.
- Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777–1855 · Germany
Early calculation plus deep theory The prodigy story is real and incomplete; the adult work is the file.
- Sofia Kovalevskaya 1850–1891 · Russia
Analysis against the rules University doors were political obstacles, not talent assays.
- Katherine Johnson 1918–2020 · United States
Applied computation under segregation Precision as public work at NACA/NASA — talent plus a system that almost did not hire her.
- Maryam Mirzakhani 1977–2017 · Iran
Dynamics and geometry IMO youth then Fields Medal; a public widening of who a mathematician is allowed to look like.
- Terence Tao 1975– · Australia
Modern SMPY-like path Child contest visibility plus a long research adulthood — not a finished child story.
- Hypatia c. 350–415 · Egypt
Public mathematician Alexandria’s teacher-philosopher — talent as a civic role, poorly documented and often mythologised.
Mathematical talent: eight lives, not a ranking. Read them as files, not as a hierarchy of peoples.
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