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by tman
5814 days ago
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The blog post gives the example of how more distractable old people can outperform less distractable young people on a specially contrived mental test. Similarly, if you put a bunch of junk for someone to trip over on the way to the bathroom, it would be the old person who tripped over it all that would remember it on his return. But in what real-world mental challenges do old people have the advantage over the young? In mathematics, for example, you're an old man at 30. Except for Erdős the meth-addict, of course. |
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Andrew Wile began work on proving Fermat's theorem in 1986 at 33. He finished first presented the proof in 1993 at age 40. He was not eligable for a Fields Medal, which I personally think is a travesty (An award reserved for the class of people considered most fit in the field? What's the justification there ). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles
Raymund Smullyan received his PhD at forty and has made significant contributions to logic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Smullyan
It has been hypothesized that mathematics has grown so large that mathematicians are now more likely to make contributions because of the amount of material which it is necessary to learn.