Just curious really, and also interested in the production of ideas. Einstein it is generally accepted stopped producing new ideas by middle-age, and Newton's achievements ended at the same point. (I welcome arguments against both these assertions). Aristotle, Plato and Euripides continued into old age producing interesting ideas.
Some, like Kant, grew senile.
Who did produce convincing, innovative arguments and what were they?
If you have the true desire and determination, your 60-year-old is a fresh start!!
Granted Artur it can be viewed that way, and of course happens, but innovative ideas are not necessarily or normally the preserve of jobs and careers. I'm certain its possible but if so where, when and who?
Dear Artur Braun ...
You know that the innovative thoughts may jump in your mind while you drink a coffee or have a bathe, and still this is the hardest part. Meanwhile, putting such ideas in a experimental framework, I think it comes second!
Young Minds Can Lead :)
Lewis Carroll startyed publishin in mathematical logic after he was 90
Mohamed, he died long before that age. But I think you're right though, he was publishing mathematics for a long time.
Artur, of course in many cases it is true, but surely what we all discovered. Generational survival in an unfair world!
I agree that having ideas does not mean 'leadership'. If you cannot play power games, no hope there perhaps. People can ignore ideas easier than potential economic or status threats.
https://www.nextavenue.org/who-says-scientists-peak-age-50/
"David Attenborough (88), James Watson (86), Noam Chomsky (85), E.O. Wilson (85), Roger Penrose (82), Jane Goodall (80), Richard Dawkins (73), Stephen Hawking (72), John Wheeler (70)"
These people are exceptional. On average the best work is done between 40 and 50, compared to a century ago when best work was done between 25 and 35.
New research is done by groups rather than individuals because of the complexity and resource requirements. Present main stream policies in research are against making major breakthroughs because it can't be repeated on a production schedule and may lead to a short career or work in an obscure place. Incremental progress is preferred.
Much important work is done in private organizations and never published. In public the path forward is in the hands of mavericks and retired researchers. The advanced researcher has a delicate balance between leaping ahead while not becoming disconnected from the community.
Here on RG some important work is being done among my associates some of whom are over 60 and 70 years old. Especially significant is the work on properties of vacuum space at extreme high energy and how they relate to deep space transport at high speed.
Age is not a bar. I feel, crude ideas turns to mature and relatively concrete thoughts with experience, not just with the experience one gains in the line(s) of his/ her discipline of research but also because of the fact the the researcher come across a number of other researchers in due course of time.
Regards
AK
I was over 60 years old when developing the concept of coordinate systems based on velocity vectors and clocks instead of base units of length components, allowing construction and testing of higher dimensional systems 6D, 12D, and 26D.
Additional work I did after age 60 included field effect propulsion, and variable properties of the vacuum at high energy.
My major work on partition of vacuum energy was done after age 60, removing the argument between QFT and GR while providing a small cosmological constant with large total energy. Taking a clue from Lagrange methods, the potential energy like gravity is subtracted from the kinetic energy to get a small net cosmological constant.
Also I was over 70 years old when developing the concept that kinetic energy propagates in stress energy fields, and the essential relation that Isotropic Cosmic Microwave Background must be regarded as a fundamental reference for zero velocity anywhere.
Again I became 70 years old while developing the concept of vacuum space limitations and energy limits related to prolonged acceleration, extreme energy, folding of space into 4D layers contained in higher dimensions, and wormholes between layers created by kinetic energy.
Not yet finished but proceeding after age 70 is my work developing limitations of vacuum space as a cause of exclusion rules and selection rules in particle physics.
Retirement provides opportunities to question the popular assumptions and push the research beyond conventional limits. In retirement the job is not at risk. while criticism becomes more helpful and less dangerous.
@ Jerry Decker: wins with his formidable list of senior productive researchers.
It would also be good to recall what I. Kant once said: Philosophy should be done by those who are over 50.
A key to success in research at any age is to make connections with other researchers, sometimes not in agreement, and often the most unlikely colleagues. There are always obstacles and missing parts for which the other researcher may give assistance, while not being fully involved in the work.
Finding an appropriate forum like RG is another key to success in research. There are many journals and readers, but not nearly enough to display all the original work. Journals can take years to process an article, as the work becomes obsolete waiting for publication. I write on RG because colleagues write here and recommend it as a way to establish date of publication.
People live and are healthier longer-maybe that is the difference, Jerry.
It seems that there is an optimal age for mental creation as it can happens with sports for the best physical achievements. The science which takes this datum as a limit is Mathematics allowing to get the Fields Medal (Nobel prize in this science) only people younger to forty. Perhaps its history can lead to this conclusion if you observe that Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty ...But there are people as Euler or Gauss who were fruitful till an eldery age with respect to the average age in their epoch. What is more conclusive in this direction is that Theoretician Physicists are also younger than the experimentalists or the grandmaster title in chess goes mainly to young people. What is the reason of such mind creative feature? Frankly I don't know but there are interesting studies of specialists that I suggest you one of them
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/Age%20and%20Scientific%20Genius.pdf
Daniel, I read the second of your titles with interest and will read the other later. At least, unlike some with irritating monotony they are not from a wiki site.
To balance up the genius data, it interests me also that both Newton and Einstein, there must be others, were not considered especially intelligent as children. Newton indeed was not at school considered anything but average. What then is the nature of great thinking and is it actually recorded or recordable by IQ tests?
Dear Stanley,
I don't know what characterizes a creative scientific intelligence. I don't know and my expertise is very far of being able to explain these issues, but obviously I'm curious about the subject of your question. When I have to select a collaborator for the group of research this is one of my main worries and one of the achievements is that there is not a correlation between good students (with previous good marks) and their achievements. There are many important factors as enthusiasm, time devoted to read or discuss, honestity in what they understand or not, criticism to what is accepted by authority and no by direct knowledge, etc.... What is the importance of these factors, their relation with the different sciences are out of my possibilities to actively follow, but they are very interesting. Let me to finish saying that the age is not given a negative phisiology but the administration and other duties decrease the time that one can devote to be in the first line of work. This perhaps could explain why is the reason to stop the scientific creation to a given age. I don't know.
Check Euler and Gauss. :) It depends what you consider innovative, however they produced valuable mathematics till late.
Flavia-Corina, which and by whom?
Daniel, I agree with you on assessment methods and problems with sorting out those who do well, that is reach the highest levels, and those who reproduce what has gone before.
It seems to me these matters are worth looking at as IQ tests have surely run their course-into absurdity in fact with the present situation that hundreds of people with little achievement behind them have recorded IQ marks far, far higher than Bohr, Russell and Einstein.
The boy or girl who became a celebrated intellect was often considered an also-ran in the classroom, apparently left behind by colleagues who made no to little mark as adults.
The life stories of celebrated people and how they achieved is interesting. I go by those I know, but few stood out as the most likely to succeed (an American term where popularity was considered of greater worth than intelligence).
Dear Stanley,
But going to your interesting question is this thread, I know that there are many studies of this subject and what is worse, it is accepted that a certain age you cannot be innovative. For instance, the Fields Medal in Mathematics which is only allowed by people younger than forty, why?. Is this justified scientifically? Frankly I don't think so, if upper such age people decreases his/her creativity it is due to many different causes as the assumption of new responsabilities: administration, looking for financial support writting many reports, family problems, and so on...but with the age the people is also very creative and with much more knowledge. This is at least my experience. Could anybody provide more "scientific" reasons in this direction?
Anything possible but if we are talking about optimum only possible around the 40s.
The researcher is not compelled to accept the conclusion of declining productivity and obsolesce. Plenty of neglected research topics have potential.
yes, Jerry, and that is another issue-choice and acceptance of research.
Notably Gauss Karl Friedrich .
Just as machine learning algorithms learn to predict based on more information, a sixty year old persons mind can too.
Learn learn learn with dedication and discipline, take the pressure out of the mind and sit back and wait for the innovation.
Best wishes
Just like Don Quixote, Antonio Manutius choose a new name when already advanced in age and wrote Topography and General History of Algiers, his masterpiece with the help of his preferred younger slave, Miguel de Cervantes. Foolishness is more deep-rooted with age and it's when it turns really dramatic and deeply impact and influence smoother young craziness.
G. W. LEIBNIZ, write Monadologie (1714), with 68 years.
Yes, may be not very common as compare to when they were young. However there are recent report by Ohio State University researchers, scientific breakthroughs are not dominated by young people anymore.
The influential Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), theorized and enunciated classical conditioning mechanism during 1920s, after 70 years of age.
I am nevertheless reminded of how many poets abilities declined with age. Wordsworth, Coleridge (probably drugs), Tennyson to begin with. Shakespeare was in his early 50s when he stopped writing.
I have applied for patent regarding generating energy from evaporation of water after 62 years of age
I have little doubt that a specific identity has been imposed on older people; less capable, less vigorous, less innovative. Age constructs also affect the young. One famous high achiever of a very late age is Titian, although I am sure there are many others.
Dear Stanley,
It is not true " Pavlov was working it out all his life", although you can say he spent most of his working life around nervous system. Indeed, he won the Nobel Prize for medicine (1904) for his work about digestion and the effect of the nervous system on secretion of digestion juices. Classical conditioning mechanism enunciation is subsequent, and appear somewhat by chance.
Dear Stanley,
I have to agree with our colleague Anastas ivanov Ivanov, when he says “Age is not a barrier to a scientist ! On the contrary, the experience grows permanently with passing years!”.
In the context of this discussion, since you invoked poets, I want to remind a famous declaration – which, in fact, among other things, demonstrates an enormous humility - of one of the most important XIX century artists, the Japanese painter Hokusai:
“From the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the form of things. By the time I was fifty, I published an infinity of designs, but all that I have produced before the age seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, birds, fishes, and insects. In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made more progress; at ninety, I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred, I shall have reached a marvellous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it but a dot or line, will be alive.
- Written at the age of seventy-five by me, once Hokusai, today Owakio Rojin, old man mad about drawing. “
Edison was born 1847. Edison last filed a patent application on January 6, 1931 for "Holder for a subject subject to electroplating". The patent was issued two years later, after his death.
"Origin of Man and Sex Team," printed in 1871, Darwin puts forward evidence that man belongs to the animal kingdom, illustrates the continuity of physical and mental traits and offers the sexual team as an explanation for the useless use of animal scars (such as the feast of the peacock), it also follows the evolution of human culture, gender differences as well as physical and cultural racial characteristics, emphasizing that all human beings belong to one species -he was born - 1809, around hi 60 years.
Darwin worked from the accumulation of information and evidence. A slow process.
John Archibald Wheeler was a very active physicist older than ninety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler
Sixty is just number,for innovation and idea person should be genius,and environment supporting,no fear of failure
This question is incorrect. After sixty, scientists are mainly engaged in more important and fundamental tasks. With this question, you offend scientists all over the world at the age of sixty or more. Sorry Mr Stanley.
Dear Teodora,
Look at the scientific production after 60 years old:
https://scholar.google.es/scholar?start=0&q=john+archibald+wheeler&hl=es&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=1971&as_yhi=2008
Dear Rasim,
Unfortunately it is a fact that somebody related the scientific production with the age. For instance, did you know that Fields medal is only for mathematicians younger than forties? For me that is crazzy but that is a reality.
Dear all,
Frank Robert Tangherlini is 96 and still has very much to advise to the Physical community. He recently partecipated to a conference where he presented his solution for the discrepancies in the calculations of the Hubble constant :
he wrote.
' I am very reluctant to give up the model because of the very simple explanation for the Hubble constant discrepancy as due to my claim that the Planck satellite and the Baryon acoustic oscillation methods get their low value because they are really getting the value for a decelerating universe,and since the Hubble constant is proportional to the derivative of the expansion parameter, the derivative for a decelerating universe is going to be smaller than for an accelerating universe, you expect their result to give a smaller Hubble constant than that for an accelerating universe. '
isn't this guy incredible?
Although I am not this age yet, but I believe that a scientist becomes mature and more productive when he/she is in sixties for different reasons:
1-Experience obtained
2-being part of many science communities to exchange ideas
3- Have more time for research than teaching
Either scientist or philosopher age is not a restricted problem .Our mind is a treasured & whatever we have experienced or learnt age is not a bar for creativity as we known that at the age of 85 & 90 some good literature ,painting , & other important messages ,individuals have received .
Indication of sixty years is not the age to be referred for such problems especially in our present century .
This is my personal opinion
I agree with M. Awad, Rohit Manilal Parikh, Mubashar Shah, Mahavir Balmukund Varma, Jerry Decker, and many others. On my own experience, I was a businessman and professor until 61 years old, and I say to me: now my daughters and son are married and the family economic pressures are down, still my wife and I have a reasonable health, this is the time to do my dreams and help people to left a legacy applying my own experience. Then I decide to finish my pending PhD when i was 63 years old and currently I do research on degenerative neurological diseases applying new mathematical concepts. Until today, I have the opportunity to develop mathematical models to analyze in real time the human gait, I published my first Elsevier book Applied Biomechatronics using Mathematical Models to measure and analyze the motors symptoms of degenerative neurological diseases. Besides, I have been writing many research papers on Parkinson’s disease and Electromagnetic fields, and currently I’m writing my second book on Artificial Intelligence and neurologic diseases to measure, analyze and classify non-motors symptoms of degenerative neurological diseases. I really give thanks to God and my family for this opportunity in my life and encourage other people to do pursuit their dreams and help other according with your experience and possibilities, and you will enjoy your life over sixty.
Of course yes, age is just a number, and there is no border or limitation to innovation..
I have applied for patent of evaporative engine in India this might change the issue of global warming as I am over sixty now
Innovation naturally happens after 60, when we are out of the rat race of career building.
In my opinion, the years should not be underestimated, as knowledge and wisdom increase over the years.
This question is not right and touches the honor of scientists with great scientific and life experience.
Rasim, the question is exploratory and has no moral dimensions- unless people choose to insert one there. You can alternatively read this as an attempt to enhance the achievements of older scientists and academics.
Ageism pioneers demonstrate that age does not stop at 60,
I am not sure that you are interested in the research on aging, but Robert Butler who coined the term "Ageism" was active in his late 80's at least. Several researchers in the field when I was looking for research were in their 80-90's. Erikson was in his 80-90's when he was still producing research. I used a paper about attitude toward life and cancer, one of the researchers had cancer and died in her 90's just before publication of the paper. So I think that there are people who do believe in living life to its fullest. James Birren another researcher in aging, the BluckMroz paper does a tribute to him at the beginning of the paper. Unfortunately, I can not find the article on the cancer researcher, but her attitude on life was amazing based on the glowing tribute given to her at the end of the paper.
Brigid
BluckMroz2018.TheEnd.IJRLR.pdf
Thanks Brigid. Great. Ican see no real reason other than social prejudice. Titian was still painting at 90.
Stanley Wilkin , there are any number of artists that are fruitful into there eighties or end of life. It just does not seem to be considered as significant as a scientist. That is the world we live in,
brigid
Yes, the production of ideas or research seems to be held in greater esteem than creating a coherent piece of fiction or poetry. Michaelangelo continued up to his death, Freud (OK a scientist cum philosopher) continued to produce in extreme old age as did Jung.
Creating a work of art is not an inconsiderable achievement, but traditionally it comes under talent so is wrongly considered a less cerebral activity.
A thought occurred to me, Da Vinci was an artist and scientist, I wonder are more artists scientists who are just not interested in expanding their knowledge beyond art? Michelangelo's talent with the Sistine Chapel and his sculpted creations just some kind of mental special genius? Who knows, I know that the joy of art lifts my soul and that is Amazing!
brigid
One of the best scientists in the history, perhaps the best experimentalist: Michael Faraday (1791.-1867).
"Later on in his life, in 1862, Faraday used a spectroscope to search for a different alteration of light, the change of spectral lines by an applied magnetic field. The equipment available to him was, however, insufficient for a definite determination of spectral change. Pieter Zeeman later used an improved apparatus to study the same phenomenon, publishing his results in 1897 and receiving the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for his success. In both his 1897 paper and his Nobel acceptance speech, Zeeman made reference to Faraday's work.” (Wikipedia:
wttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday)
Brigid, you are right: there are artists which are also scientists; Albrecht Dürer , for example, was, at the same time, the first german theoretician of the human proportions and the initiator of modern anthropometry, with the treatise Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion ( Nuremberga, 1528), published only after his death [ in the XVII century the german doctor Johann Sigismund Elsholtz (1623-1688) used for the first time the term ‘anthropometry’)
George Stubb continued researchs on animal anatomy, including drawings of dissections, wich were also used by scientists.
At the present time, we have many artists working in the named Bioart (portuguese Mde Menezes, for example).
Stanley:
It is really true, that "there are any number of artists that are fruitful into there eighties or end of life". What to think about Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015, Oporto), the best known of portuguese filmmakers? Directed the last film (The Old Man of Belem, 2014) with 105 years !!!!! Was an example to us all.
Yes, for sure... They may be in most productive time of their professional career.
If you look at tasks and expectations across your scientific career in your earlier years there is more time and freedom to pursue new scientific ideas but, as time passes, this freedom becomes curtailed as you have to pursue funding, encourage and mentor staff and younger scientists, organise conferences and promote yourself. Notably, Steven Hawking's condition saved him from some of these tasks and he was productive as both a scientist and promoter of science until his death. In summary: yes, older scientists can produce and expand new ideas but everyone slows down over time (wear & tear) but also your resources becomes used for activities other than science.
Thank you for your question for which I have already reply on 29 May .
Surely! My Daddy, having 3 degrees, had spoken German and Latin till his death.To greatest George Santayana, " To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring". Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_santayana_104166?fbclid=IwAR1_23VHCNcEbr7YSLCxpbUSzIfeUnGa8F3AkyzMfOtetbysLCVZ83lxlwM#We6oGBI5Pt4OqeB3.01
I don't thing the age is a problem to be active or to produce innovation.
One of important person is Yoshiro Nakamatsu, Japan’s Master Inventor Has Over 3,500 Patents.
„I didn’t know that painters/philosophers/ and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.“ — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Источник: https://ru.citaty.net/tsitaty/1518384-kurt-cobain-its-better-to-burn-out-than-to-fade-away/
Artists young or old have varying degrees of productivity and relevance. Age should enhance rather than detract, spoken like a true old fogey :-)
brigid
Artists produce different types of art at different ages. Shakespeare's work grew in depth. Michaelangelo's grew in ambition. The great Chinese painter Qi Baishi produced wonderful work until his death.
https://www.google.com/search?q=qi+baishi+final+paintings&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYmsDpnL3jAhWTi1wKHV7YC-QQ7Al6BAg
Look into studies based on recent ageing or age composition insights or patterns. The main reason may possibly hidden inside that concern.
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