Age and the nobel prize

Abstract

Mozart was composing minuets when he was four years old and sonatas when he was seven. At eighteen Gauss invented the method of “least squares.” Alexander the Great's famous lament came at twenty-one, and Keats had written most of his sonnets before he was twenty-four. Most men do their memorable work in their thirty years' prime of life, but Titian did some of his best painting during his seventies, and at eighty-two Winston Churchill is still writing his History of the English-Speaking Peoples and throwing darts at charity fairs. And Abraham was an hundred years old when his son Isaac was born unto him. Winners of the Nobel prize have also made their contributions at different ages, with those in physics and chemistry being significantly younger than those in physiology and medicine.