Globally, Jews have earned the following shares of individual Nobel prizes: Economics: 41% (more than 205 times their share of the population) Medicine: 28% (more than 140 times their share of the population) Physics: 26% (more than 130 times their share of the population) Chemistry: 19% (more than 95 times their share of the population) Literature: 13% (more than 65 times their share of the population).
The outstanding achievements by so many Jewish doctors, nurses, and scientists, are almost impossible to count. The list includes Paul Ehrlich, Albert Sabin, Jonas Salk, Lillian Wald, and more. Look em up!
Jonas Salk and Alfred Sabin individually created vaccines for polio, a terrible disease that doomed people, mostly children, to a shortened miserable life in a metal chamber called an Iron Lung that helped them breath. Their work saved many millions across the globe from a horrible death.
Pacemaker and defibrillators The Jewish American cardiologist Paul Zoll helped to pioneer the inventions of both the pacemaker and the defibrillator.
Genetic Engineering Jewish American scientist Paul Berg, Genetic Engineering has shown that it might be a promising way to treat cancer. Provide for mass production of insulin and help crops become disease resistant.
1893 German Jewish chemist Waldemar Haffkine created Cholera and bubonic plague vaccinations.
Cholera and the bubonic plague are both responsible for massive outbreaks and deaths around the world throughout the centuries. Known also as the black death, the bubonic plague is responsible for being the deadliest disease outbreak in history as it ravaged Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
With the huge global trade expansion occurring in the 19th century, cholera was given the ability to stretch its disease to almost every continent on Earth, killing tens of millions of people.
By the late 1800’s there still was no vaccine invented for either of these very deadly diseases.
Jewish microbiologist, Waldemar Haffkine was responsible for saving millions of lives worldwide with his work on a vaccine. He went to India, lived there seven years where the disease originated and tested the vaccine on himself.
Performing arts Outstanding accomplishments by Jewish individuals in film, television, music and Broadway is an unending list. Some of the greats: All jews! Barbara Streisand, Paul Newman, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Al Jolson, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Milos Forman, Steven Spielberg, Simon & Garfunkel, Julio Iglesia, Gene Simmons “KISS”, Barry Manilow.
Jews who excelled in writing, acting, performing, composing and contributed so much to the human race in science, engineering, humanities, medicine etc. for literally centuries is endless.
If you use the search engine “Google” to explore the contributions Jews have made to humanity, two Jewish men, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed that search engine! They were students at Stanford Univ.
Lasers The Laser is widely used in everyday devices such as barcode scanners and DVD players to more specialized tools used to mark targets or measure speed. (Think military).
Jewish American physicist Theodore Maiman first fired a laser on May 16, 1960. His work was based on the foundations first established by Albert Einstein in 1917. who was also Jewish.
Scientist Zhores Alferov won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the heterotransistor laser that can handle extremely high frequencies. His work on laser technology has had a huge impact on our world. He won the Nobel Prize. Without this lazer, it would not be possible to transfer all the information from satellites down to the Earth.
The list is again, endless of Jews who contributed so much to the human race over literally centuries. Understanding the complexity of the situation in the mid-east today is not a simple problem. It was Albert Einstein who said “ You can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that caused it”.
Roy Hubbard, Bryan County, Georgia resident
To submit a letter to the editor, email Andrea Gutierrez at agutierrez@bryancountynews.com for a chance to featured in The Vox Pop. Submissions may be edited for length and/or clarity.