Are Nobel prize winners gettting older?
Data on the distribution by the age of 647 Nobel prizewinner in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economics and literature and time dynamics of the age during 1901-2003 are presented in the paper. The mean survival and the expected life span of the prizewinners was also calculated. The mean life span of the Nobelists in natural sciences steadily increases from the first to the fourth quartile of the 20th century. The rate of the prizewinners selected at the age of 61 and more years increases from the 23% at 1901-1925 to 53.1% at 1975-2003, whereas the rate of the winners selected before the age of 40 years decreases from 19% to 2.7% during the same period. Analysis of available data on the Nobel Prizes for chemistry or physiology or medicine has shown that the majority of the Prizes was awarded to researcher discovered his main results at the age of 31-40 (41.8% and 47.4%, correspondingly). The mean interval between a discovery and a selection for Nobel Prize in chemistry inc
