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THE secret of being a good mathematician or physicist might be a more feminine brain. Men in these disciplines appear to have been exposed to a female pattern of oestrogen and testosterone in the womb. “It’s unnerving to think the profession I’m in was determined by the hormones I was exposed to in the womb,” says psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, UK.

His team looked at the ratio of the length of people’s index finger to their ring fingers. There is evidence that this ratio is determined by the prenatal levels of the sex hormones, which also…

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