Background
Awards come late in life
The Nobel Prize ceremony was held in Sweden last Saturday. But why are the laureate scientists increasingly older? “Today, a young Einstein would be curbed, because something completely original won’t deliver citations.”
Bart Braun
Wednesday 14 December 2011

The Nobel Prize ceremony was held in Sweden last Saturday. But why are the laureate scientists increasingly older? “Today, a young Einstein would be curbed, because something completely original won’t deliver citations.”

By Bart Braun There may a hundred and one reasons to go to university, but if you stay there, it’s because you want to be a scientist. And if that’s your career, the Nobel Prize is the crowning glory. There are other prizes, even prizes that carry more money, but that is the one that counts.

To win a Nobel Prize, you must discover something special; however, there is a misconception that you must be young to do that, young, enthusiastic and naïve - the scientist with a rock star status, that is the idea. After all, Albert Einstein once said that if someone had not made a major contribution to science before he was thirty, he never would.

But there is good news for everyone over thirty: things have changed since then. In a recent article in science journal PNAS, two American economists described the average age of Nobel Prize winners. That age is rising, and it has been for years.

Firstly, people are awarded the prize at an increasingly later age. Whereas back in the day, the Nobel Prize would be presented to someone who had made a major breakthrough, nowadays, the committee lets a discovery mature to see whether it really is the promised breakthrough. Dan Shechtman, who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry, made his discovery 29 years ago. More and more often, octogenarians are invited to collect the award.

But something else is going here, something more significant: the age at which people make their breakthrough is mounting too. Prior to 1905, one fifth of the Prize winners were under thirty when he – Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, in 1911 – made his big discovery; in the next hundred years, that percentage was to drop to just above zero.

In Chemistry, the percentage of people who made their breakthrough before they turned forty dropped from 66 per cent to zero in the same period.  The average age at which someone makes a Nobel-prize winning discovery has increased by seven and half years (Medicine), by thirteen and a half years (Physics); the average recent winner made his discovery at 48. So Einstein was wrong.

Maths seems to be an exception, though: mathematicians rarely win their Fields Medal after their fortieth birthday. “You need to have a lot of space in your working memory for maths, and that becomes more difficult as you get older”, says Professor Jan Zaanen with a sigh. “The Nobel Prizes in my field are usually won due to a symbiosis between a young mathematician and a veteran in the field who keeps an eye on the prospects.”

There are two possible explanations for the rise in age: 1. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked. 2. A scientist’s chance to shine comes later in life. Henry van ’t Hoff, the Dutch chemist who discovered that are both left-handed and right-handed molecules, published his discovery when he was twenty-two. James Watson was 25 when he and Francis Crick mapped out the structure of DNA. Physicist Werner Heisenberg discovered his matrix equations at 23, and his uncertainty principle two years later, while his colleagues Pauli and Dirac were 25 and 26 when they made their breakthroughs. Einstein had his annus mirabilis, in which he turned the world of physics upside down with four publications, in the year he turned 26.

Brilliant physicists of 2012 hoping win the Nobel Prize must first become familiar with the work done by Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli and Dirac before they can discover anything new. Scientists stand on the shoulders of giants, and must climb higher before they reach the summit of the human pyramid.

“I dare to state that it is more difficult to win a Nobel Prize than it was in their day”, says Zaanen. “When the theory of quantum mechanics had just been discovered, everything made giant leaps forward. Will we ever experience anything like that again? I hope so, it would be nice.”

Chemist Professor Jan Pieter Abrahams points out that modern university programmes have a much broader scope. “There are surprisingly few Mozarts around. If genius were hereditary, we would have throngs of geniuses, far more than in Mozart’s time. But much has changed in our educational processes. It used to be normal to teach children just one thing from a very early age, but Mozart’s father would probably be arrested for child abuse now. And something similar has happened at universities: we are given broader foundations and we have to know more before we can be a chemist.”

You may only do independent research after your doctorate - research that you have designed, according to Abrahams. “Until you are about thirty-five, you have to work on research that some else thought up. Within that scope, you can do whatever you want, but if you do any brilliant work in that time, the Nobel Prize will go to the person who designed the research.”

Moreover, according to Zaanen, there is “far more pressure to conform” on young researchers.  “While you are still young, you are taught all about the citation index, and that you have to work on that if you want a career. If you do something really original, it can be a long time before the citations start flooding in, and that will be too late for your career. There is a lot of pressure to work on something that is fashionable: whole hordes of young, talented people are involved in “trendy” science. Nowadays, a young Einstein would be warned not to be so unorthodox, as he wouldn’t get any citations.”

Does the increasing age mean that the nature of science is changing too? Poets often peak when they are young, while novelists are only warming up as they reach forty – and they can often produce good work for years. Is science starting to resemble writing a novel, and is less like writing poetry? Zaanen likes the comparison: “I think it’s logical that you have to be wiser to write a novel. It works like that in science too: your brains have to mature, like cheese. They work more coherently, and I actually enjoy growing older. And turning it around: don’t you have to be deeply miserable to be a good poet? You can only be truly unhappy when you are young, because your brains are not yet fully developed.”

He claims that something similar applies to scientists: “Your supervisor gives you an impossible task, and you work on it for months. You try all sorts, while the people in the room next door achieve success. At a certain point, you’re so desperate you try something completely mad which proves to be your breakthrough. Great science is born of great unhappiness. When you are further on in your career, your attention is fragmented, and it won’t happen again.”

Abrahams does not think that the comparison works: “You write a novel alone, whereas nowadays, science is a team sport. You can’t just jot down a paper for a Nobel Prize with pen and paper alone; you need a whole infrastructure and an academic environment for that. On the other hand, the age might drop a little: communication technology has gained momentum and you don’t have to be in the same lab to be constantly in contact. That’s where the modern young ones have an advantage.”

Leiden tops the list in University Guide

Leiden shares a first place with Radboud University Nijmegen as the institution with the best broadest education in Keuzegids Universiteiten 2012 [2012 University Guide].

The guide is written annually, based on the results of the National Student Survey and on evaluations by experts responsible for the accreditation of the programmes.

Both universities score an average mark of 6.3 [out of ten], closely followed by Utrecht University in third place while the University of Amsterdam has a final place. Leiden University has five of the best bachelor programmes in the country, i.e. Law, Criminology, Film and Literary Studies, Computer Science and Mathematics.

Leiden´s Law programme achieved a first place with 6.4 points, although, according to the guide, none of the programmes in the Netherlands are really brilliant. Of the three Criminology programmes in the Netherlands, Leiden has the best too: 6.6. Computer Science in Leiden was given the best marks: 7.4 and Film and Literary Studies was awarded 7.8, ranking it above Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. Mathematics in Leiden is regarded as the best programme, with 8.4, just slightly better than Groningen.

The Mathematics programme as a whole comes out tops, and the University Colleges are in second place. The Leiden version has a shared third place, with 7.6.

If you want a good chance of a well-paid job, you should choose Medicine, Dentistry or Pharmacology. And according to the guide, your degree will be the least use to you if you get if from any of the Romance languages, English or from any of the Arts and Culture programmes.

Education at Dutch universities is “a bit of an afterthought”, writes Editor-in-chief Frank Steenkamp, as faculties and staff often think that it is more important to do research than to teach. The guide also has some criticism on the information provided on the programmes, which sometimes presents an all too favourable picture.

Last week, the Leiden Rankings, the rankings formulated by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), were introduced and according to which, the University of Twente was the best Dutch institution, in 64th place. Leiden is the Netherlands’ sixth university, coming in at the 100th position. The rankings reveal that the Dutch universities are closely ranked and provide good quality education. The Netherlands should be regarded as a being on a “high academic level” according to the CWTS. The Leiden Rankings focus on the universities’ research performance levels. DJZ