At age 18 many parts of the brain that do low level processing can no longer be rewired. Recent studies using functional MRI scans have shown that people who have learned to play chess at a young age (before the age of 5 if I remember correctly) use the brain parts that are normally used to recognize faces in order to recognize patterns on the chess board.

So, we should stop pretending that subjects like math and physics are difficult. These subjects are as difficult as reading and writing are to illiterate people. Also, the fact that these subjects are useless if you don’t plan to pursue a career in science is not a valid excuse to not to teach these subjects. The same can be said about almost all subjects taught in school.

Most children of age eight are capable of enough abstract reasoning to start to learn abstract algebra. So, if we start at that age, most children will be able to master calculus at age ten or eleven. Most of the university level curriculum will have been mastered at age 16 or so (not only for maths, but also for physics, biology, chemistry, literature, history, etc. etc.).

As the daughter of a very successful businessman who certainly fits any definition of affluent you may have, I find some offense in this. I’m definitely going on to grad school in physics, and while more of my peers from prep school are going out to be businessmen, lawyers, doctors etc I never saw an indication that we were less likely to become physicists than anyone else (because not like there are that many to begin with right?). In fact, I would argue that a child whose parents are in the top 10% is more likely to go into physics than someone in the lowest 10% because you don’t need to fret about the lack of job market quite as much.

Just my two cents.

“In 2005, total private charitable donations comprised 2.1% of the 2005 United States gross domestic product (GDP).”[1] I believe the US GDP in 2005 was 12.41 trillion[2], so that makes total private donations as $310 Billion ($310 250 000 000).

Free markets are valuable because they empower the citizen. The more empowered the citizen the more they can increase their earnings and donations. It seems that about %2.2 percent of after tax dollars[1] are donated, for US citizens. So there exists are large amount of giving. It makes sense for scientist to tap into this giving. It should made easier by the media coverage of science education and the small increases of government funding. Not to mention that blogs such as this are successful, I think, in attracting many outside science.

[1] http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2006/Jun/22-515647.html
[2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108121.html

You are right. It’s too much of a gamble to assume that there are genuinely honest philantropists willing to fund education and research on a “no strings attached” basis. Using the examples of Gordon Moore and Jim Simons is a bit of cherry-picking.

Even more dreadful to think it in the hands of the whims of a few individuals who might or might not be pushing certain agendas but certainly do not suffer from this inconvenient and inefficient bore that is democratic oversight.

that’s why nobody does physics, at least not the children of the “affluent”. Nope, business studies, law, economics, accountancy etc etc are the choice for the most privileged.

These studies lead to “easy” professions which generate large incomes basically by being parasitic on society.

True creators, whether they be scientists or artists, will struggle most of their lives to match the income that these “parasites” can command.

Yet without a talented supply of scientists (and artists) we won’t have much of a society. Artists don’t need much training, scientists do. The immediate payoff from training a million more scientists is not acceptable to the modern capitalist model. Sure, if we train a million more scientists, one of them may discover a free source of energy for us, er, in a “few decades or so”. That would have saved the 100 billion dollars spent on the Iraq invasion. But it’s too much of a gamble for the thickies in charge. Let’s make the farmers happy today, it’ll get us votes next year.

A truly poor state of affairs.