55-Year-Old Philosophers vs. 55-Year-Old Scientists
I continue to be struck by my finding, last week, that great philosophers produce their most influential work at a very broad distribution of ages. (Nifty chart here; if it's blurry click a second time to enlarge.) Physicists and mathematicians, in contrast, are reputed to peak early. Einstein notoriously said "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so".
Stephan and Levin (1992) have compiled data on the age at which Nobel-Prize-winning scientists did the work leading to the Nobel Prize. (The data could use updating, admittedly.) Their data confirm that scientists do tend to peak fairly early (even if not as early as Einstein suggests) -- in their mid-thirties. The graph below contrasts the distribution of ages at which scientists did the work earning them the Nobel with the (approximate) distribution of ages at which leading philosophers born before 1920 did their most influential work (see the earlier post for my method; one tweak on that method: I used Google Scholar to break the two ties).
Note that while chemistry, physics, and medicine all peak sharply in the 30s, philosophy distributes evenly across the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Note also that although there is almost no Nobel work done by scientists in their 60s or older (0.8%, according to Stephan and Levin), in my sample -- admittedly small, just 46 philosophers -- 8.7% of great philosophers' most-cited work was done at age 61 or older.
So take heart, my gray-haired friends!