What I got-

The author got-

Small examples and conclusions-

Tell a story first.

Once upon a time, there was a mathematician. Let's call him Lao Wang. Lao Wang published many important papers when he was young, and was regarded as the number one figure in the field of mathematics in China. He got the professorship early, and it was smooth sailing.

Today, Lao Wang is nearly 60 years old and holds many leadership positions in school and society. He doesn't have to do it himself to do scientific research. Usually instruct graduate students and postdoctoral students. The school is doing public relations in many ways and wants to turn Lao Wang into an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a banner of the university.

But outsiders don't know that in recent years, Lao Wang has always had a heart disease-after forty years old, he never made an important mathematical discovery. His work is very busy, but he knows that he is not busy with front-line math research. He feels as if he is moving away from the forefront of mathematics, and sometimes he can't even keep up with the thinking of the research group when discussing a problem. Lao Wang often thinks of the enthusiasm and passion when he was young, and the joy of solving a problem is lost.

"I can't refuse to accept my old age." That night, when his wife was taking a bath, Lao Wang sighed at home. "After all, scientific research belongs to young people, just like football players. Retirement means retirement-and my current job is equivalent to the coach and manager of the team. " Lao Wang picked up his mobile phone and wanted to see what circle of friends the young people in the group had made.

Lao Wang was dumbfounded.

The circle of friends and classmates was screened by his college classmate Lao Zhang. Lao Zhang just made a major mathematical discovery and became a global news figure overnight!

Lao Zhang and Lao Wang, who did well in the college exam, had a good life. Unfortunately, I didn't get along well with my tutor after studying abroad. After getting a doctorate, I didn't find a suitable academic position. After several rounds, I even worked as an accountant in a restaurant. Lao Wang and Lao Zhang haven't contacted each other for decades. He just learned from a friend that Lao Zhang is not doing well.

But now! Lao Zhang actually solved such a cow problem! Lao Wang has mixed feelings.

Mrs. Lao Wang returned to the bedroom and saw Lao Wang's hand, which had been dry and stable, shaking with a mobile phone. "What's the matter with you?" The lady asked.

"There must be Lao Zhang's position in the history of mathematics in the future ... but who will remember that I am Lao Wang?"

(Lao Zhang blames age for the decline in energy-the older you get, the less energy you need and the worse your thinking quality. )

As you may have guessed, Lao Zhang mentioned in the story is Zhang. At the age of 58, he made a major breakthrough in the conjecture of twin prime numbers. Of course, I made up the character Lao Wang.

I tell this story not to praise Lao Zhang, let alone to satirize Lao Wang. In fact, I think Lao Wang has made a very important contribution to mathematics and trained many students. I tell this story to discuss a purely technical question-what does age mean to scientists?

Today, we are going to talk about an article "Don't give up: Old people can make creative breakthroughs" written by Albert-Laszlo Barabbas)2 of Washington post on February 10. The author is Northeastern University. This article is not chicken soup for the soul, but a serious academic study of Barabas himself. Our readers in China may have heard of Barabashi. His two books, Link and Outbreak, have Chinese versions, both of which are good books worth reading.

Barabbasi first introduced two previous studies.

In the 1980s, 2026 famous scientists in different fields from ancient times to the present were investigated. At what age did they make breakthrough contributions? It turns out that most people make a breakthrough around the age of 39.

Later, someone specially inspected 525 Nobel Prize winners from1900 to 2008, and counted the age of their award-winning discoveries. It turns out that most people make their key discoveries in their forties, which is a little older than previous studies. This is obviously because modern people have been educated for a long time.

So, should we say that the peak age of a scholar's academic career is 40 years old? Is scientific research really the same as playing football? Then why did Lao Zhang, in his fifties and sixties, score the key goal of the World Cup?

Perhaps it is normal for Lao Wang to be fierce when he was young, because he was full of physical strength at that time; Lao Zhang can still score goals in his sixties, which is not normal. He just had an inspiration by accident?

Barabas's research is different from that of his predecessors. First of all, he thinks that if we only look at the best scientists, the sample is too small. He just looked at tens of thousands of researchers and analyzed big data.

He found that the most productive time for scientific researchers is the first 20 years of their career, that is, from graduate students to their forties. This is the "golden 20 years" with the highest output of scholars' papers. After 30 years of your career, that is, when you are in your 50 s, your output will drop sharply, and the number of papers you can publish every year will drop to one-sixth of that of your youth.

So it seems that scientific research is really a project for young people.

But what is special about Barabbasi's research is that he not only examines the total output,

The quality was also investigated. He asked a simple question: * * When was the most influential paper in your whole academic career published?

The result was very unexpected. A scholar's greatest achievement is not necessarily when he is young or old-it is completely random!

If this great achievement depends on inspiration, then Barabas's result is that inspiration has nothing to do with age.

For example, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 won the prize by virtue of a paper published in his postgraduate period, which was the first paper in his life. Another Nobel Prize winner in chemistry was his award-winning research work when he was in his 70s-he was a professor at Yale University, when Yale stipulated that he should retire at the age of 70 and close his laboratory. He insisted on doing experiments after retirement, so he won the Nobel Prize.

So those people in their fifties who haven't made great discoveries are not too old to be inspired, but because they don't do it.

So doing scientific research is not playing football. Barabbasi said that people's inspiration and creativity will not decline over time. The real reason why you have accomplished nothing is not that you have lost your creativity, but that you have not persisted. If you persevere, your creativity will not let you down.

Lao Wang may not have lost his physical fitness, but it is Lao Zhang who really shows his physical fitness.

| My comments

Our theme this week is "Ordinary People". This concept is meaningless, and you should not replace the individual with the overall average performance-today's research just illustrates this point. According to the average performance of scientists as a whole, they really can't work after 50, so you can't explain Zhang. Barabas improved the statistical method before reaching different conclusions. Statistics is not impossible, but it is easy to mislead.

But what I want to say more is, what is the so-called scientific research inspiration?

Conclusion 1: Barabbasi only points out that a person's creativity will not decline with age. I want to emphasize that with the growth of age, a person's creativity does not seem to increase! What this study says is that the age of making the greatest contribution is completely random.

Conclusion 2: This shows that inspiration actually has a lot of luck. (random effect: success is only a special case among many failures. Because of this, it is so different and so dazzling. )

We can compare scientific research to gold panning. You dig everywhere. When I was lucky, I suddenly found a big gold mine. When the luck is bad, there is no harvest for a long time. Of course, you can gradually get a sense of the trend of gold mines, just as experts are really good at scientific research and topic selection, but you can never deny luck.

* * Conclusion 3. For scientific research, luck fears hard work. As long as you dig more places than others, you are more likely to dig gold mines than others. Lao Zhang was unlucky when he was young, but he kept digging and finally got something. Lao Wang stopped digging after he was fifty years old, perhaps not because of his declining physical fitness, but because of too much administrative work. **

| From this

If you think you are Lao Wang, you are Lao Wang. You think you are Lao Zhang, and you are Lao Zhang.

| What did I get:

1. Any success is just a special case among many failures. Because of this, it will be so different and dazzling!

2. There is no way to guarantee your success; But doing the right thing persistently can greatly improve your chances of success.