This autumn, as America prepares for midterm elections, there will be plenty of startling statistics about Washington politics on display. But here is one oft-ignored number that merits more attention: if you count the members of Congress with a background in pure science, the grand total comes to, er, two.

Yes, you read that right. Today, almost half of the 535 members of Congress have a background in law, and several dozen have worked in business or real estate. Several dozen more have served in the military, and a handful were engineers.

There is just one physicist and one chemist: respectively, Bill Foster, a Democratic Congressman in Illinois, and John Moolenaar, a Republican Congressman in Michigan. That is lower than even the tally of former radio show hosts now in Congress, which is seven.