Your next statement would required some documentation; while I would frankly expect to find that Jews are overrepresented in the professions you cite, I would be surprised to find that they form “the majority” (i.e., >50%) of those professions. Still, there is no question at all about profound Jewish overrepresentation in Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes.

Mormons are likewise overrepresented in certain fields (though, sadly, Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes are not among them). For example, according to the sources cited and conclusions reached in this article, Utah has led the nation in per-capita production of scientists for 60 years. This posting likewise states that “Latter-day Saints have more professionals and managers than Catholics or Protestants but fewer than Jews or ‘others.’” And again, “By the 1990s Mormons in Canada tended to be overrepresented at the entrepreneurial, management, and professional levels and under-represented in unionized occupations and union leadership.”

On the other hand, I don’t believe I said anything about Mormons being ‘high achievers’, though you might check out the CEOs/CFOs in The Mormon Way of Doing Business. Likewise, while I was living in the Washington DC area, I became personally acquainted with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT), Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), as well as with Bill Marriott (CEO of Marriott International) and his son David.

Still, I suspect Mormons tend not to be overachievers because of the strong emphasis on (and demands of) family and church; it was an LDS prophet, David O. McKay, who famously said “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” A far more detailed look into why Latter-day Saints tend not to be professional ‘high achievers’ can be found in this article.

Finally, while Jewish identity tends to derive from genealogy and culture — that is, people tend to be born Jewish and consider themselves as such, regardless of their adherence to Jewish religious law and tradition — Mormon identity tends to be self-selecting, either through conversion or persistent involvement in the LDS Church into adulthood. This means that the LDS Church tends to be more diverse — racially, ethnically, and culturally — than the Jewish population at large.

In other words, how would you know a Mormon if you saw one? ..bruce..

The list of Jewish nobel prize laureates in biomedical, chemistry, physics, economics, and literature is immense! Where are the “academic and professional credentialed” Mormon high achievers hiding?

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