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:Well yes

[Rei]

I disagree. Modern technological innovations are more and more dependant on having a large scientific knowledge base, which takes time to acquire. This, to me, seems the main reason for the increase - not some shift from a "golden age" in education. I would only expect this number to increase in the future.

Re:Well yes

[alienfluid]

Why is this a "waste"? Do you expect to do groundbreaking physics research without knowing and understanding the fundamental laws or even basic calculus? There is no point in re-inventing the wheel and so some time spent in reading literature is time well spent.

Re:Well yes

[Rei]

Um, no. For example, lets say that you want to come up with an innovation relating to modelling of airflow turbulence. Go ahead and try and do that without first learning the Navier-Stokes equations and familiarizing yourself with at least some of the dozen or so turbulence models. Of course, try learning the navier stokes equations and turbulence models without a solid physics background as well. Try to get that physics background without a calculus and algebra background, and try to get that without a basic mathematics background.

It's not about "memorization" - it's about learning, and there's an awful lot to learn to be prepared to work in a modern scientific field.

It's time...

[orkysoft]

"It's time to leave science to the 150-year-olds!"

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.