John von Neumann and Albert Einstein were part of a wave of great scientists who fled Nazi Germany, went to America and created new fields of research. The effect on innovation by American scientists was vast. Patenting in chemistry increased by 71%, according to research by Fabian Waldinger, then of Warwick University, and co-authors. America later built on its huge wartime scientific boom to win technological races against its new communist rivals. For decades, America’s immense investment in research lured Europe’s best scientific talent across the Atlantic.