Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins

nuke-alwin writes "Stephen Hawking has traveled to South Africa in search of Africa's Einsteins. The project will create Africa's first post-graduate center for math and physics. The British government has unfortunately decided not to back the project, which is hoping to fight poverty by identifying the kind of talent that can create wealth." Neil Turok is deeply involved as well; he was recently named to head the Perimeter Institute in Canada, whose server we brought to its knees this morning.

Niel Turok

Niel Turok was quoted as saying, "I'll also help defend the starving African children from rampaging dinosaurs, free of charge."

The purpose?

If the purpose is to somehow stimulate the local economy, I think it would make more sense to help build and expand the underlying infrastructure that would eventually lead to the desire to have top math/science experts in the region. Otherwise they will most likely just move somewhere where they're actually wanted and can be sufficiently compensated. Is there a need for physics experts when the region is severely lacking in agriculture?

Of course they won't fund it

If Hawking wants to get money for this sort of thing, he needs to make it into a reality show and get a TV network on board. Some ideas:

Africa's Next Top Physicist. Every week, contestants will be tasked with solving a major problem in physics. Their efforts will be judged by a panel led by Hawking, using Tyra Banks as a body double. The loser will be eliminated from the competition and thrown into the African savanna, where he will be eaten by a lion.

African Idol: Physics edition. Auditions will be held in various tribal areas throughout Africa. Hilarity will ensue as the ever-caustic Hawking mocks contestants' failures to adequately explain string theory. Losers will be thrown into the African savanna, where they will be eaten by lions.

Deriving With the Physicists. Contestants will be paired up with professional physicists and tasked to derive the Unified Field Theory. Each week, progress will be gaged by a panel of judges. Losers will be thrown into the African savanna, where the lions, fully sated from contestants from the earlier shows, will ignore them. They will then be shot by poachers.

Survivor: Africa. Contestants will spend the entire show dealing with extreme heat, drought, and the ever-present threat of starvation and disease while trying to scrape up enough money to attend school while keeping his family fed and not dying from malaria. The one who can manage to survive long enough to attend a post-graduate physics program wins.

Africa and its genetic diversity

New studies show there is more genetic diversity between humans in Africa:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1288178 [nih.gov]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050310103042.htm [sciencedaily.com]
http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Tishkoff1-1999.htm [psu.edu]

It might be easier to find a genius among very different subjects, than finding one in a group where everybody is similar.

Hawking is a genius

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

Because they're not tools. I know many Indian (real India) and Chinese nationals who plan to move back to their "impoverished" countries to work and play.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

The more you know *rainbow star goes by*

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

India and China have seriously better prospects than say Sierra Leone [theconnection.org] or Ethiopia. [bbc.co.uk] By contrast to many Sub-Saharan African countries where there is no wealth to be had, China gained 50 new billionaires in 2007 [forbes.com] and India has three of the world's ten richest people. [forbes.com] While they aren't yet at the EU's standard of living, to call modern day China or India impoverished is laughable.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

O FFS, using extreme examples like Sierra Leone to generalize about Africa is just ridiculous. I live in South Africa, and there are a lot of bright people here, both South Africans and from other African countries. We need an initiative like this - if some of the people choose to leave with their skills, so be it, but many will choose to stay and apply their knowledge here. With your reasoning: Maybe the USA should stop building universities, because we all know Noth American countries like Nicaragua and Honduras are dirt poor and just a waste of any attempt at excellence.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

that may be true, but i've notice that a lot of smart, wealthy successful people eventually "go home" in some sense, not always physically, of course. They may donate to local causes, invest, become involved in politics or advocacy. whatever they do, they probably would not have been able without opportunities like this.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

i've notice[d] that a lot of smart, wealthy successful people

And how many of those wealthy successful people were mathematicians and physicists? Smart, certainly. But wealthy?

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

I'm pretty sure there's loads of math involved in economics and things like managing hedge funds. Don't CEOs make something on the order of 10 trillion dollars a second?

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

Well.. certainly more math than you've demonstrated the capacity for...

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

A lot of people who get big corporate jobs in wealthy countries send money back to where they came from, benefitting the local economy. Go to Moroccan villages and you can see loads of fancy houses being built by people currently working in France who plan on coming home and retiring early. Software engineers from India who have come to the U.S. after training in India have gone home after a few years and founded companies with the money they saved. Cities in Romania like Cluj enjoy higher standards of living than other parts of the country because, thanks to the good education and English-language skills, people work hard abroad and then come back to indulge themselves. The list goes on and on. If you train people in a poor country, many will go and never return. However, some will make something of themselves abroad with their education and come back, which is a win for the local economy.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

Not as much of a win as keeping them in-country the entire time. The countries still loose out overall. They're starting with college degrees already, and these people could help significantly by being engineers and such in their home countries.

Honestly, I don't begrudge them wanting better for themselves and their family if they send money home (would do the same myself), I'm just looking at it from a national perspective.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

That's you - and many others I'm sure.

You don't know what it's like to grow up in an impoverished country. Hence you don't know what it's like to hurt for your country and to have a sense of duty to make it better.

Also, just because the talent is exported, people can still do great things to enable others to become great. You see this in soccer all the time. African talent is being exported to the top clubs in Europe but many players go back home to establish soccer academies, schools and the like.

Hats off to Hawking.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

Whether they go back home or not is not as important as providing the opportunity for these gifted individuals. They may still contribute something to the world, regardless of their location.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

I personally know someone who attended a good college here in the states, got a job with MS back in the late 80s/early 90s, cashed out, and moved back to Africa to found a college.

Some people do genuinely have a feeling of responsibility.

That aside, it is an established fact that people living outside impoverished areas send a lot of money back home. In some countries, this is the primary source of foreign currency.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

If this is the same person I'm thinking of, he gave a TED talk [ted.com] on Africa and his university not long ago.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

I'd hop on the first chance at a big corporate job in some other country.

In my village in Northern India, more and more people are moving back to the village, after going to universities in Canada, the USA and England, and having become (relatively) rich. My dad is a first generation immigrant to Canada from India, and we are a middle class family, my dad drives a taxi (I know, stereotypical,) and my mom works in a bank. My dad just went back to India last month to build 4 3 story houses in our village, one for him (when he goes back) and 3 for his brothers and their families. A little money goes a long way in these impoverished regions, and not only does this stimulate the local economy with all the construction, but when I went there my dad paid for a year of broadband internet for the local school, and I am saving up for a dozen or so cheap desktop computers to bring there next time I go.
The point is that when people go back to the poor areas where they or their ancestors grew up, the feel a duty to improve the quality of life for the residents there.
The lucky few that get out, generally will try and make it easier for others to get out, and as time goes on the quality of life can only get better.

Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1

Despite how people play the "brain drain" story, how many people in any country even feel that the job they're doing REALLY benefits their country directly? Sure you may feel you're benefiting your company/boss, but your contribution feels so diluted by the time it reaches the country level it doesn't even matter.

One can talk about "some kind of loyalty to the country" but calling that into question based on taking a overseas job because you want better pay to help support yourself and your family is utterly unfair. We all want to see our country do well, but sometimes you can help more by becoming an export that keeps paying the country back. If you want to use nonsense metrics to compare ones sense of civic duty, why don't you compare voter turnout: US voter turnout in 2004 was 56%, compared to South Africa at 77%.

(I am South African, I have worked in the UK, I am now living back in South Africa and did bring money back.)

Re:Einstein is over-rated

Race has nothing to do with it. Look at yourself; dumb as a box of rocks.

Put any kid of any race (say, your kid) in a third world country with little food, no medical care, and have unlearned people raise him, and don't send him to school, and he'll be just like the native Africans.

Take one of those African kids and raise him in an enlightened industrial society and he'll excel as much as anyone. It isn't about self esteem, it's about quality of life.

As to your own stupidity, racism is a tool of the rich to keep everyone else at each others' throats so they won't notice who's really using and abusing them, tool.

Re:Einstein didn't create much wealth

Unfortunately, theoretical physics is not very practical and therefore does not create much wealth.

You are kidding, right?

I don't even know where to begin, but here are some counterexamples of theoretical physics being quite practical: nuclear fission reactors, fusion weapons, transistors/microchips, computers, internet, TVs, sattelites/GPS, cell phones and wireless comms, MRI and PET scans, electron microscopy, LASERs...

See, I think you are making the same mistake of underestimating theoretical physics as the Germans did in the 1930s...

Re:Einstein didn't create much wealth

Something like: "Theoretical physicists turn money into ideas. Engineers turn ideas into money."

Re:no post-grad center on the whole continent?

If TFA (which I haven't read) suggested that there's no post-grad physics or math department in Africa, it's wrong. I have personally visited several physics departments in various African countries that had Ph.D programs. For example, here's a math program [uonbi.ac.ke] and here's a physics one. [uct.ac.za]

Re:Small Pool of Healthy

Many exceptional athletes: soccer players (Didier Drogba), marathon runners, sprint runners, long distance jumpers, etc. come from Africa.

If their eating habits didn't stop them from becoming champions, why should the same food affect possible geniuses?