In Michael Lewis's book "Flash Boys," one of the characters, telecom expert Ronan Ryan, suddenly noticed around 2005 that more and more trading software "seemed to be written by guys with thick Russian accents." That was because most of these guys were no longer doing academic work in Russia and other former Soviet countries.

A recent paper published in Moscow by Vladlen Timorin and Ivan Sterligov from the Higher School of Economics attempts to quantify the outflow of Russian mathematicians since the Soviet Union's collapse -- a momentous migration that has changed the academic and business landscape in the U.S. -- and orphaned Russia of its best and brightest, but hasn't completely wiped it out as a math superpower.

Mathematics was long a refuge for the Soviet Union's smartest "internal emigres" -- escapists who wanted nothing to do with the Communist ideological machine. To be sure, the state used them to do things like sensitive defense research, but at least they enjoyed more creative freedom than authors, painters or even composers. A formidable training and selection system for mathematicians and physicists evolved, with meritocratic elite schools and a system of competitions, known as Olympiads, that helped the best minds to get noticed. There wasn't much international recognition, though: The Communist Party preferred to play its cards close to its chest. Mathematicians couldn't even publish their work overseas without permission and, since the 1936 case of Nikolai Luzin, who was accused of saving his best results for publication abroad and nearly lost his life for it, many preferred not to ask for that permission.

David Fuller's view

The USA’s greatest strength, I suggest, is that in being a generally successful, democratic, entrepreneurial and pluralistic economy, it attracts some of the most intelligent and creative people in numerous fields from all over the world.