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| Age of scientific Nobel Prizes, by decades |
In my conference closing the 1997-98 term at the Universidad Autónoma of
Madrid, entitled The
myth of progress in the evolution of Science, I wrote this:
The Nobel
prizes provide an interesting measurement of the evolution of scientific
progress during the twentieth century. These prizes award the most important
advances in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine.
Statistics show a few worrying trends, such as the progressively higher age of
the scientists who have received the Nobel Prize: the average age has gone up
from 47 in the first decade to 60 in the last. The number of Nobel prizes
awarded to people below 40 has gone down from nine in the thirties and fifties
to zero in the nineties. Not one person born after 1950 has yet received a
Nobel prize.
