

Mean ages of first/best contribution to various fields - azsromej
http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~limchuwe/articles/youth.html

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ojbyrne
The narrative suggests another reason for the "legend."

 _He wrote a manuscript spelling them out when he was 20, the night before he
was killed in a duel. A Norwegian mathematician and contemporary of Galois's
named Niels H. Abel died of tuberculosis at age 26 after solving a 300-year-
old problem and discovering what are now known as Abelian functions._

Life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last century, so results
from before that would be skewed young.

~~~
jacoblyles
Why does the legend persist in mathematics more than other fields?

~~~
zitterbewegung
Mathematicians want to live fast and die young? There is another legend that
there is no nobel prize in mathematics because Gosta Mittag-Leffler cheated on
nobel's wife even though its probably not true. See
<http://almaz.com/nobel/why_no_math.html>

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mhartl
I talked with David Goodstein at Caltech once about the youth legend in
physics. His basic view was that people took two data points---Newton and
Einstein---and over-extrapolated. He pointed to Feynman (among others) who
continued to make major contributions throughout their careers. Of course, a
couple counterexamples isn't enough to disprove a trend, but it does seem like
the legend is build on a rather flimsy foundation.

N.B. I found myself quite enjoying the writing in this article, and I realized
that the author was a colleague of mine from college. Lila Guterman was a
writer for the _Harvard Science Review_ when I was its editor-in-chief. I
particularly recall a bang-up article she wrote on naked mole rats. Glad to
see she's keeping up the good work!

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teej
I have a feeling that the Field's Medal requirements help drive down the age
for Mathematicians a lot more than the article gives it credit.

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callahad
I wish the article proper had treated fields other than mathematics.

(Though that won't keep me from exclaiming: Woohoo! Go Geology! I still have a
chance!)

~~~
markessien
I just spent 10 minutes trying to think up a joke that combined research in
geology, a rock and a hard place. I couldn't think of any, geology is such a
dry subject.

~~~
pasbesoin
I tried to make something out of Toe, but the acronym I was trying to remember
(THAI) doesn't really work. Nonetheless, an interesting, newer process for
extracting bitumen from tar sands.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands#Toe_to_Heel_Air_Injec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands#Toe_to_Heel_Air_Injection_.28THAI.29)

