I was reading through the list of MacArthur Fellows and noticed that a lot of them are in their 30s and with a shock realized that they were younger than me. I’ve always wondered how I would feel the first time I saw a doctor younger than me (hasn’t happened yet), but I have a feeling it will be one of those mid-life crisis moments I’m experiencing more and more these days.
Out of curiosity I added all the ages of the Fellows together and divided that number (1,095) by the number of Fellows (25) to discover that their average age is 43.8 years. That means I have 4.8 years before I’m past the average age for exhibiting some form of creative genius. There’s hope!
Here’s the breakdown of the Fellows’ age by decade (20s, 30s, 40s, etc.):
- 20s = 0
- 30s = 11
- 40s = 9
- 50s = 1
- 60s = 4
What with all the noise about the baby boomers they appear to be a bunch of slackers in the creative class (only 1 in the 50s?). Of course it could be that as we age our creativity goes right down the toilet, and maybe if I wasn’t so lazy I’d look back at the averages from 10-20 years ago to see if the boomers were as creative in their 30s and 40s. But it’s nice for my so-called slacker generation to have something to lord over the Boomers so I’m not going to look any deeper.
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Befuddled 
Sorry guy, but you got this one wrong. You got plenty of time to exhibit genius. In fact, you may well have exhibited it and it just missed the notice of the Mac folks. We Boomers — 53 here — have no corner on the genius-RECOGNITION market, but we do have a decent share of geni….like, um, well, um, Dylan and Springsteen.
Ha!
Well, the genius of Dylan or Springsteen is debatable. I can’t stand either of them myself (to me Dylan sounds like he’s getting his teeth extracted), but I have plenty of non-Boomer friends who like them so it’s probably just me.
I think you’re right…it’s really a recognition thing. Now if they were looking specifically for financial or political creativity I think the Boomers would definitely get the recognition. After all they gave us Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (look what an adventure they’ve made the White House) and Bill Gates and Michael Milken. Yep, the Boomers have been VERY creative.
Seriously, I think creativity is a function of innate smarts combined with experience and you only get more experience as you get older. With the massive amount of Boomers out there I think we’re only going to see more creativity coming down the road, and like I said I bet if you looked back 10-20 years you’d find an even larger concentration of winners in their 30s and 40s. But I’m one of the oldest members of the slacker generation so I couldn’t be bothered to do the research!
As always thanks for the comment John.