of 42) is associated with a 2.6 percent increase in mathematics publications and a 4.5 percent increase in mathematics citations. These correlations reflect both the extensive and intensive margins: strong IMO performers are more likely to become professional mathematicians (as proxied by getting a PhD in mathematics); and conditional on becoming professional mathematicians, they are more productive than lesser IMO performers, and are significantly more likely to produce frontier research in mathematics. The conditional probability that an IMO gold medalist will
-income countries who had the same score in the IMO, participants born in low- or middle-income countries contribute considerably less to published research over their lifetimes (see Chart 1 ). We reached that conclusion by counting individuals’ published work, as evidence of original research, and citations of their research by others as evidence of their findings’ influence. A participant born in a low-income country produces 34 percent fewer mathematics publications and receives 56 percent fewer mathematics citations than an equally talented participant from a high
work determined by manual data collection). We further classify them into migrants to the U.S. if they did not represent the U.S. at the IMO and their place of work in 2016 was in the U.S. Finally, we measure the scientific productivity of IMO medalists in two ways. First, we use mathematics publications weighted by cites as per the MathSciNet public author pages. 5 Second, we use a measure of community recognition independent of bibliometrics: being invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), a prestigious accomplishment for