The greatest physicists of the twentieth century were noted for their highly visual styles of thinking. The usual answer to this question is No, but that is not the right answer. The purpose of the following remarks is to show that the answer should be Yes. Why males have an advantage in certain spatial-visualization abilities, just as why women have an advantage in writing skills, is not well understood. But tantalizing clues suggest that sex hormones may be part of the explanation.
Dramatic evidence comes from sex-change therapy.
Patricia Hausman s research provides another tantalizing clue as to why high levels of the abilities important to success in the physical sciences and engineering may be less common in females. In a nationally representative, longitudinal study, Hausman identified a group of women who possessed the unusually high mathematical and mechanical abilities that predict success in engineering and the physical sciences. To her surprise, these women also turned out to have an unusually high rate of miscarriages and stillbirths. They also matured more slowly and were taller, thinner and more physically active than women in the control group. This was a pattern of development more characteristic of males.