Innovators Are Older Than Ever

GrokSoup writes "A new study shows that great achievements in science are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Using data on Nobel Prize winners and great inventors, the author shows that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century. This runs contrary to accepted wisdom in science, which says that most scientists peak in their 20s. It is also welcome news to those of us who have not yet, ahem, done our Nobel-winning work."

Comments

Re:Either that

[the eric conspiracy]

Or the Nobel commision just take 60-80 years to get around to honouring the scientists

Well, when I was getting my PhD I worked with John Fenn. He was awarded a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in chemistry when in his 80's. The interesting thing is that the work that merited this award (ion spray mass chromatography - allowed characterization of large biological molecules and led directly to the development of protease inhibitors) was done by John when he was in his late 70's.

John had a lot of trouble with the administration at Yale at the time because they were trying to force him into retirement. Now of course they are embarresed by the who episode because of Fenn's great accomplishement at the time they were trying to put him out to pasture.

John was a great person to work with too - genuinely cared about his students and an enthsuiastic teacher who did a great job both presenting difficult material as well as acting as a mentor.

I feel greatly priviledged to have known such a man. He is a credit to the human race.

lots of reasons

[bcrowell]

I can see lots of reasons why this might be true:

1. They claim a shift of 6 years over the course of a century. Well, life expectancy has gone up a lot in this century.
2. Big Science didn't exist 100 years ago. Today, you have people publishing papers in particle physics with 100 names on them. So out of those 100, who gets the Nobel Prize? The guy who's old enough to be the leader of the project.
3. In certain fields, such as string theory, it just takes a really long time to learn enough mathematics to be able to start working on it. String theory is an extreme example, but, e.g., physics majors today learn Maxwell's equations at age ~20, but when Maxwell did his work in the 19th century, it was cutting edge math, and he was actually known more as a mathematician, not a physicist.
4. In 1900, it was normal for people to get a PhD at, say, age 26, and go straight into research. Today, a PhD usually takes about 5-9 years, and then after that you end up doing a string of postdocs, say 1 to 3 postdocs at 2-4 years each. So you're maybe 34 by the time you even have your first faculty job.

I think there's definitely a certain type of mathematical/scientific work that is most likely to be done by someone very young. A classic example would be the three groundbreaking papers Einstein published in 1905, at the age of 26. Nobody else had the guts or the mental flexibility to come up with relativity, or the photon theory.

But then again, you have, say, Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat's last theorem. That's a project that took many years of intense work in total solitude, and a young person just wouldn't be able to do it without committing professional suicide -- Wiles could do it because he had tenure, and could afford to fail.