Lawrence Summers is owed an apology

I t is rare that a brilliant man victimised for telling the truth is vindicated by a tabloid story. But that is what has happened to Lawrence Summers, the Harvard University president driven from office last year after suggesting what the press reported this week: that there are more smart men than women.

The story of the rise and fall of Professor Summers (right) shows that in academia, as anywhere else, there are some things you can't say, no matter how smart you are.

Until 2005, Summers had had a career of unalloyed success. The son of two professors, Summers won tenure at Harvard aged just 28, and went on to become Chief Economist to the World Bank at 36. He won a prestigious economics award widely seen as a precursor to a Nobel, and in 2001 became President of Harvard, aged just 46.

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He was thus eminently qualified to speak at a conference in January 2005 on one of the most controversial issues in academia: the scarcity of female professors in maths and science.

In a lunchtime talk, he trotted out some of the usual explanations. Perhaps women lack the monomaniacal drive needed to get to the top; perhaps they suffer discrimination by sexist appointment committees.

But then he decided to float a theory of his own, drawing on his expertise in statistics. Perhaps the intellectual abilities of men and women aren't quite the same.

To judge by the resulting furore, at this point some of the audience either could not - or would not - follow his argument. This is the gist of it: the spread of intellectual abilities of both men and women are known to follow the famous 'bell