[kjhdf89unl]

It does show that your parents involvement in your teaching plays a part, as does being in the right place at the right time and culture of the country you reside in. I'm not knocking his own effort either. When you look at the developments and achievements coming from the US, you have to wonder why does the rest of the world get it so wrong?

[Aeolun]

I think in the US, it’s either really great, or fairly sucky to live.

In the rest (of the western world), it’s just always meh. They’re optimizing for different things.

The US as a country is also just bigger, so it will have more successes in absolute terms than other smaller countries. The same thing is happening in China now and India will soon follow.

[strikelaserclaw]

throughout history, depending on what country/civilization was at the top, a lot of scientific achievements came from there (egypt, china, india, Greece, rome, muslim cultures, portugal, england, france, germany, and finally usa etc...). I'm going to say a-lot of scientific innovation is sociological in nature. Meaning the confidence of a country is directly correlated to the amount it invests in scientific research and corresponding results. Once that confidence runs out, due to a host of reasons, the country falls into a decline and scientific pedigree moves to a different place.