Who was born in February?

Engineer in aerodynamics E. Vinogradov collected desktop calendars. Looking at them somehow at leisure, I noticed - what year you take, in February, there are many more anniversaries of famous people. Perhaps fleeting observation would be forgotten, but soon he bought a book about great physicists, and the conjecture was confirmed - geniuses are born in February. ..

Evgeni Sergeyevich understood that he could not find special reference books on gifted people. The only publication that contains information about the birth of geniuses of all time and people - the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Thirty volumes! A year later, after scribbling dozens of thick notebooks, Yevgeny Sergeevich built the first schedule. The fertility curve, steeply bending, peaked in February, and by mid-summer it dropped to its lowest values.

- As a result, I got a card file for seventeen thousand people, - says Vinogradov. - I began to study the dependence of the birth of great people on the time of the year. First on the first five volumes, then on the next five and so on. It's amazing, but the graphs of all six subgroups were similar to each other, like two drops of water.

Vinogradov puts out sheets of paper, and I'm convinced that regardless of age, geographical breadth and even gender of gifted people, more is born in January - February - March, and the minimum is in July. Separately, the author considered the "physicists" and "lyricists", representatives of the exact and humanitarian sciences. And again an unknown law collected the majority of the members of each subgroup under the winter constellations.

- And what about Pushkin, Macedon, Goethe, Rutherford and other brilliant people? They were born in the summer!

- The dependence I found shows only one thing: the probability of a gifted person in the winter is much higher than in the summer. For example, 1908 was very "productive" for talents, but many of them were born in August-September. Each rule, as you know, has exceptions.

- Maybe the results are very simple: in winter, in any age, in any country, more people were born than in the summer months. Maybe that's why there were more geniuses among them, too?

- I also thought about this. I found in the library a very rare guide to comparative statistics of Russia and Western European countries. There were information about the birth rate at the end of the XX century for ten countries. I built a chart and saw that in the winter there are actually more babies born. I explained this at first to calendar factors - fasting ends, everywhere - merry holidays, weddings are playing. .. But all the same it's strange: from the encyclopedia, I wrote out people from the first millennium BC to the 20th century. In different nations for a period of time, customs and rituals changed hundreds of times - it's hardly the case.

There are other, even more mysterious patterns, Evgeny Sergeyevich continues. It turned out that the maximum death rate also falls on February, and people born in the summer, especially in June, live on average longer for two years. But also it not the most surprising. Soviet embryologist A. Brusilovsky in the book "Life before birth" wrote that the average weight of newborns varies according to the seasons, reaching a maximum in January, February, March. Then their weight gradually decreases by July-August. These fluctuations are insignificant, but the very fact of their existence is interesting.

- Studying the cycles of solar activity, the famous scientist A. Chizhevsky established that the Sun influences many terrestrial processes. For example, peaks of epidemics depend on solar activity. And what if seasonal genius is associated with flares on the luminary?

- I'm sure of it! After all, solar activity is an increased flux of ionizing radiation. But this radiation can be reproduced on Earth. Its physical nature is known, and properties are already being used, for example in agriculture. If the seeds are irradiated before sowing, the shoots from them will grow more lush and vigorous in relation to the unirradiated ones. By processing ionizing radiation eggs of fish, chicken eggs, you can get disease-resistant large offspring. In irradiated carrots, much more carotene, in potatoes - starch, beet - sugar. ..

In other words, this irradiation strengthens the main sign of a living organism or plant, according to which nature conducts evolutionary selection. In the evolution of man, the main thing was the perfection of the brain. Here is the mechanism of genius: flashes on the Sun occur primarily in January - February - March, so even more talented people are born this time.

- And yet, strong flashes on the light are so rare. ..

- And geniuses are born rarely. True, one more condition must be met. The biological effect of radiation on living tissue is dramatically increased if there is a lot of oxygen in the tissue. And in winter there is more oxygen in the air than in the summer months. Hence, the fabrics are also enriched by it. To my assumption did not seem very fantastic "I will give one observation. It is noticed that in women who received oxygen during childbirth, children overtake mentally the peers.

Finally asked Vinogradov, in what month was he born?

- In. ... February, "answered Yevgeny Sergeyevich with embarrassment.