ravena at cco.caltech.edu (Karen Allendoerfer) writes:
>I would vote for getting rid of all age-based requirements, but I've
>heard a counter-argument, almost exclusively from men, that
>chronologically young scientists are the most creative. You especially
>hear this about mathematicians and physicists; they fret if they
>haven't made their major discoveries by age 30, they're washed up.
This counter-argument is perhaps *the* myth that young male scientists
torture themselves with, in much the same way young female scientists
obsess about whether getting married is incompatible with a career as
a scientist.
For what it's worth, the older mathematicians and physicists I have
discussed this with pretty much discount it. They don't agree about
whether the effect exists but they do all agree that, *if* it exists,
it has everything to do with being new to a field and nothing to do
with age per se.
--
Una Smith Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Yale University
una.smith at yale.edu New Haven, CT 06520-8106
