The top three scientific and industrial superpowers of the 19th- and first half of 20th century were Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. These nations industrialized early, supported large educational programs, and developed ways of promoting research and development. The Germans in particular were an early promoter of the idea of having close ties between government, industry, and scientific research. They were also a "hub" for scientifically-minded people of other nations as well — Germany was where many Americans, Russians, Hungarians, Austrians, etc., also trained and worked during its height.

After World War II, their productivity dropped off enormously, both because of the enormous brain-drain caused by the war, because of the devastation of their scientific and industrial infrastructure, and the splitting of their country. By this point the "center" for science and technology in the "free world" had moved to the United States, which implemented many of the same practices in terms of education and funding of work, amplifying them to even larger scales with federal funding. It became the "hub" of the best immigrant talent that would have previously gone to Germany, and benefited from this.

Which is to say: one of the real truisms in the history of science and technology is that context matters. You can occasionally have a true genius emerge out of a random context. But if you start to see one nation or culture producing a lot of successful people and industries, it is probably because they've set up their society to value and promote those things. And none of that is fixed in stone: the same nation, if the context changes, can lose that edge.