I notice that really talented people, always have talented parents. Rarely do I read stories about poor blue collar parents producing science wiz. It leads me to believe that genetics play a much bigger role in our intelligence than nurture.
Children with genius parents usually expose their children to high level content very early into their childhood. They also pass on a way of thinking and intuition of their subjects that a non-expert in the field won't have.
I noticed that too but my parents weren't talented in an intellectual sense. In fact, they were fairly ordinary and one was a high school drop out. I was brought up believing that science is for eggheads and worse people who spent too much time studying were socially inept and justly shunned.
Fast forward a few years. I went to university in my mid twenties and study computer science and take as many hard, ball-busting science classes I could. I noticed that a lot of the people there had already had patents who had careers in science, particularly physicians and engineers. I'd say that's very important to grow up with mentors and resources to teach you how to learn in the first place (my life has improved by orders of magnitude since I learned how to grok). Almost everyone I know who performed well in these classes put in more time studying and they struggled just as much as anyone else.
Genetics plays a role in success in science and math but socialization also plays a profound role. Maybe I just have an axe to grind but the myth of science and math being reserved for rarified genius over the curious and dedicated does a lot more harm then good.
Would be interesting to see if the children of talented parents that are put up for adoption and raised by average parents are as successful. Or vice versa, talented parents raising children of average parents.
But to your point, Steve Jobs is an example of that. He had blue collar adoptive parents, but his birth parents were PhD level people.
I am not gonna put my foot in my mouth again and say this is proof of anything, but it is interesting to me.
Rare. But when it happens, it rocks the Earth. [1]
[1] Richard Feynman