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Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

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Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#21

Post by jballanc »

lkrubner wrote: post #4

A distinction I read somewhere, that I think is useful, is that people tend to be either primarily conceptualist in their thinking, or they are empiricists who learn from experience. Conceptualists have their big breakthroughs before the age of 35, and empiricists have their big breakthroughs after 35. In conceptual fields, such as math and physics, the big breakthroughs happen young. Werner Heisenberg was 27 when he…

Einstein, in particular, is an interesting case. He was 26 when he had his annus mirabilis (1905) in which he published 5 ground-breaking papers in physics, including the Special Theory of Relativity.

However it took another 11 years until he was able to grasp enough of the mathematics to finally formulate the General Theory of Relativity in 1916, at age 37. Of course, if you're going to use statistics from Nobel Prize winners' works, you have to keep in mind that Einstein won not for the General Theory nor the Special Theory of relativity with which we usually associate him. He won for his paper on the photoelectric effect, one of the other papers he published in 1905...at age 26.

Edit: It's probably also worth pointing out that, someday in the future, it's not inconceivable that we may eventually place the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in the same league as Relativity. That paper was published in 1935, when Einstein was already 56 years old. If it is not currently considered of the same merit as Relativity, that is only because we still don't have a good handle on the full implications of that work. (And, yes, I realize that ultimately EPR will likely prove to be wrong, but a great scientist teaches as much by being wrong as by being right.)

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#23

Post by basicallydan »

poolpool wrote: post #19
dhfjgkrgjg wrote: post #16

Who would have thought? That in your late thirties, you have gained experience, knowledge, contacts, maybe even a degree of financial support, all of which lend towards the formation of breakthrough ideas. Now, where is my prize?

Its common sense that universal health care and higher taxes for everyone is a great idea. Depending on who you ask its also common sense that universal health care is a ridiculous concept and no one wants to pay for other people's hospital visits.

I do! We've been doing it in the UK for decades, very few people complain about it.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#24

Post by chubot »

danso wrote: post #8

I'd like to see this data evaluated across different time frames. Maybe prodigy was more pronounced at a young age in the past century because people, well, became full adults and died at earlier ages? Now that in today's Western democracies, we've essentially delayed adulthood to at least the mid-20s, marriage until the 30s, and retirement into the 70s...this time delay, plus the fact that the discoveries we make no…

Did you read the article? It addresses exactly that point and has a graph.

Innovators have been peaking slightly later in life as the 20th century has progressed, in part because today's scientists have more to learn than their predecessors did ...

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#25

Post by onmydesk »

As someone in my late 30s I think the main reason is this- Its time then to stop fking around and just get it done. It dawns on you at this age where you are in your life, how far you've got to go and it annoys you that thus far you didn't get 'it' done yet.

You're not staring death in the face but you're close enough to feel its influence. If not now when? That spurs you on, beyond any motivation you ever had at any age before. The experience helps, the realisation that those before you weren't any more special than you helps, but the ticking clock motivates like nothing else.

Here's my own personal motivator that has meant the most at this age.. — 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.' - Henry David Thoreau. That should scare the hell out of you, unless you're not old enough yet.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#26

Post by mason240 »

lkrubner wrote: post #4

A distinction I read somewhere, that I think is useful, is that people tend to be either primarily conceptualist in their thinking, or they are empiricists who learn from experience. Conceptualists have their big breakthroughs before the age of 35, and empiricists have their big breakthroughs after 35. In conceptual fields, such as math and physics, the big breakthroughs happen young. Werner Heisenberg was 27 when he…

I would buy you HN gold if I could.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#27

Post by new_test »

thewarrior wrote: post #20

Here's an interesting exception : The poet Rimbaud wrote all of his poetry before the age of 20 and is considered to be one of the greatest poets of all time.

No way! I just picked up a book of his poems at my local second hand shop, come back home, open hacker news and see him mentioned. What are the odds!

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#28

Post by sobes »

Seems to be corroborated in tech by some nice examples:

Jimmy Wales: founded Wikipedia at 35 and Wikia at 38; Marc Benioff: started Salesforce at 35; Mark Pincus: started Zynga at 41; Reid Hoffman: founded Linkedin at 36; Robert Noyce: started Intel at 41 with a 39 year old Gordon Moore; Irwin Jacobs was 52 and Andrew Viterbi was 50 when they founded Qualcomm; Pradeep Sindhu: founded Juniper Networks at 42; Tim Westergren: started Pandora at 35; Robin Chase: founded Zipcar at 42; Michael Arrington: started TechCrunch at 35; Om Malik: started GigaOm at 39; Reed Hastings: started Netflix at 37; Craig Newmark: started craigslist at 42

... and the list goes on and on. check out this Quora post (source of the above) for more interesting examples: http://qr.ae/tG78W

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#29

Post by _random_ »

onmydesk wrote: post #25

As someone in my late 30s I think the main reason is this- Its time then to stop fking around and just get it done. It dawns on you at this age where you are in your life, how far you've got to go and it annoys you that thus far you didn't get 'it' done yet. You're not staring death in the face but you're close enough to feel its influence. If not now when? That spurs you on, beyond any motivation you ever had at any…

There is always a back-up plan of having kids, focusing on raising them well and hoping that maybe they will come up with something cool.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#30

Post by bhicks005 »

Is it possible that studying Nobel Laureates skews these numbers? It would be extremely difficult to receive a Nobel for an achievement late in life because of the usual lag time between the achievement and the award and the fact that Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously.
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