Any academic who tells you they never thought about winning the Nobel prize (or a Fields Medal) is pulling your tail. You're not supposed to admit it, of course. It's déclassé. Still, misquote a prize requirement or an announcement date at any faculty gaggle and watch how quickly you are corrected on minutiae of the selection committee by-laws. People don't memorize those things for fun.
Yes, prizes are nice. The recognition of your peers. The money. The top-notch Swedish hookers (so I'm told). But underneath it all is the drive to create something enduring. Something world changing. And live long enough to get it noticed, laureate group photos still looking like a daguerreotype of the first Solvay conference. If your impression of science is eureka on Monday, patent office on Wednesday, and pick up your prize on Friday, I'm afraid you are in for a shock. Most people go to the grave before they go to Stockholm.
It's easy to forget the good stuff usually comes out early. Get a physicist liquored up and they'll confide in slurred whispers that Einstein could have died in 1916 and physics would be none-the-poorer. Instead, he shuffled around this mortal coil until 1955, which gave him lots of opportunity to charm the public and work on his elder statesman look (and pick up his Nobel), but, alas, his creative days were over.
Still, the finality of death brings youth's vigor into sharp focus. There is no greater professional sting than discovering yet another someone famous you have outlived, the years ticking by and you still laboring in obscurity. Some large names appear on that ledger indeed. Kepler and Descartes didn't live long enough to collect a Social Security check. Neither did Enrico Fermi or Wolfgang Pauli. It ain't just Middle Age scientists who didn't make it past middle age. And many got their strings clipped far sooner.
So, for your edification, I have assembled a list of names that loom large o'er the science landscape whose owner jacked it in all too young. The cutoff is 50. Two score and ten. Admittedly, this is rather arbitrary: people in their 50s are hardly decrepit husks spending their days watching The Price is Right and waiting to die. (LabKitty has a cousin in her 50s who is still smokin' hawt. Um, I probably shouldn't have shared that.)
However, 50 feels about right. Edwin Jaynes dies at 75 (leaving his masterpiece Probability Theory: The Logic of Science unfinished) and you think: oh well, circle of life. Edwin Hubble dies at 64 and you think: oh well, he had a long career. Maxwell dies at 48 and your natural reaction is: he got robbed.
I picked names I recognized, or names associated with feats I recognized. My list is certainly incomplete. If I have overlooked your dead BFF, feel free to add him or her in the comments.
In case you are feeling marginally good about your career progress this fine day, scroll down to your current age and read about all the people who did more with less time. It that doesn't motivate you to get back to the bench, I don't know what will.
=== 20s ===
Evariste Galois – 21 (1811–1832) French mathematical prodigy. Killed in a duel whilst defending the honor of a woman (although he may have been set up after crossing the Wrong People). Before stepping onto the Field d'Honor, Galois mailed his entire intellectual output to the French Academy (mailed them again, I might add, the establishment squares having ignored his previous attempts at recognition). Working in the area we would call abstract algebra, Galois advanced the concept of a group, and made important contributions to Abelian integrals and continued fractions. He's also the guy who proved there is no formula for the roots of polynomials of degree five or higher. A romantic entanglement, a competing paramour, two muskets, and a fateful morning. The rest, as they say, is history.
Alice Ball – 24 (1892–1916) The first woman, and the first African American, to graduate from the University of Hawaii (MA in Chemistry). Developed a treatment for leprosy using chaulmoogra oil extract that remained in use until the advent of sulfone drugs in the 40s.
Niels Henrik Abel – 26 (1802–1829) Norwegian mathematician extraordinaire. Died in poverty, but the Norwegians put him on a stamp so I guess that makes up for it. Made fundamental contributions to algebra and analysis. Innovator of elliptic functions, discoverer of Abelian functions. Wikipedia tells me Abel was the first to prove the convergence of the binomial series. Which is odd because all my other sources say Newton discovered the binomial series. So, what, he just tossed it out there? I guess when you're Newton you can get away with that sort of thing. Hi, I'm Isaac Newton and the binomial series converges. Also, monkeys fly outta my butt. Fact checking: none.
Henry Moseley – 27 (1897–1915) Made pioneering contributions to the understanding of atomic structure and spectroscopy. Many believed he would have won the 1916 Nobel prize in physics. When the First World War broke out, Moseley resigned his academic post and shipped out to Gallipoli with the British army as a civilian volunteer. Four days later he was shot in the head by a sniper. Robert Millikan wrote that Moseley's death alone made WW-I "one of the most hideous and most irreparable crimes in history."
=== 30s ===
Nicolaus Bernoulli – 31 (1695–1726). The Bernoullis were the Corleones of calculus. Apparently, you went into the family biz or pop had some cross words for you at the dinner table. Arriving on the scene just as Newton and Leibniz had birthed their great edifice, the Bernoullis took it out for a spin. There were the brothers Jacob and Johann who extended calculus, and also made fundamental contributions to geometry and probability theory. There was Johann's son Daniel who pioneered the use of calculus in mathematical physics. And then there was Nicolaus, Daniel's younger brother (Nicolaus II; the first Nicolaus Bernoulli lived to a ripe old age). Died at age 31, but not before having more of an academic career than most academics dare dream. Chair of Mathematics at University of Padua. Professor of Law at Berner Oberen. Joined the St. Petersberg Academy at the request of (wait for it) Peter the Great. Died eight months later.
Walter Ritz – 31 (1878–1909) Swiss mathematical physicist and the "Ritz" in Rayleigh–Ritz, the variational technique finite element jocks owe their livelihoods to. Wikipedia tells me Ritz wrote a lengthy critique of 19th century electromagnetic theory which led him to dismiss the existence of the aether. Meanwhile, just down the road in Berne, a fellow by the name of Albert Einstein was reaching the same conclusion...
Ettore Mojorana – 32 (1906–1938) Particle physics isn't really my thing, but there's a Majorana equation, so here we are. Fermi apparently thought very highly of Mojorana's work, comparing him to Galileo and Newton. Published his first paper as an undergrad. Proposed the existence of the neutron (for which James Chadwick would later win a Nobel). Hired as a full professor at the University of Naples, after which his behavior became increasingly bizarre. Disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was presumed dead.
Ada Lovelace – 36 (1815–1852) Born Ada King, daughter of Byron (yes, that Byron) and later married to become the Countess of Lovelace. After dad died, Ada's mom encouraged her interest in mathematics. Famous in contemporary nerd circles for her work with Charles Babbage on the first computing device (the "Analytical Engine"). The computer language Ada is named for her, but that is hardly her fault.
Rosalind Franklin – 37 (1920–1957) Superb experimentalist whose X-ray crystallography photographs provided Francis Crick and James Watson critical clues to the structure of DNA, work that would win them the 1962 Nobel prize. Portrayed rather unkindly in Watson's telling of the discovery in The Double Helix. Some say Franklin was victim of a male-dominated science establishment that denied her due recognition. A fair claim perhaps, but rather moot as the Nobel selection committee by-laws state the prize cannot be awarded posthumously. Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1957.
E'tienne-Louis Malus – 37 (1775–1812) French mathematical physicist. Accompanied Napoleon on his conquest of Egypt. Discovered Malus' law, describing the intensity of polarized light. One of 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel tower.
Joseph von Fraunhofer – 39 (1787–1826) He of Fraunhofer lines. Had a life right out of a Dickens novel. Orphaned at eight. Apprenticed to a harsh glassmaker (Wikipedia actually uses the phrase "harsh glassmaker"). Attracts the attention of Prince Maximilian after the shop collapses on him. Permitted study due to Max's patronage. Went on to create superior optical devices. Used his superior optical devices to discover the solar spectral lines named for him. Poisoned by the heavy metals used in the making of his superior optical devices.
Blaise Pascal – 39 (1623-1662) Before Pascal went bonkers, he did pioneering work on calculating machines and made important contributions to geometry and probability theory. Perhaps you have heard of Pascal's triangle. (Bonus fact: if you write Pascal's triangle sideways, the inverse of a square matrix formed from any collection of its entries contains only integers.) Also worked in hydrodynamics, lending us his name as the SI unit of pressure. The programming language Pascal is named after him, but that is hardly his fault.
Bernhard Riemann – 39 (1826–1866) Two words: Riemannian geometry.
Evangelista Torricelli – 39 (1608–1647) Italian inventor of the barometer, and many things besides. Noi viviamo sommersi nel fondo d'un pelago d'aria. Has a law, a trumpet, a submarine, an asteroid, and a crater on the moon named after him.
=== 40s ===
Karl Schwarzschild – 40 (1873–1916) Solved the field equations of general relativity (ironically, while serving in the German army during WW-I) giving us the famous Schwarzschild radius describing the event horizon of a black hole. Also made important contributions to optics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics.
Sofia Kovalevskaya – 41 (1850–1891) Pioneering Russian-born mathematician. Studied under Carl Weierstrass (her faculty advisor), Helmholtz, and Kirchhoff. Most enduring contribution was to partial differential equations. Her life has been portrayed in film and television and has been dramatized in a half-dozen novels.
Alan Turing – 41 (1912–1954) Brilliant British polymath who made fundamental contributions to logic, computer science, and biology. Originator of the eponymous Turing test, the brass ring of the hard AI problem. As part of the cryptography group at Bletchley Park, Turning helped crack the Nazi Enigma code during WW-II. No less than Winston Churchill called it the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory. As a reward, the Crown stripped Turing of his security clearance and subjected him to chemical castration when his homosexuality was discovered. He committed seppuku a few months before his 42nd birthday rather than face more outrageous slings and arrows.
Émilie du Châtelet – 42 (1706–1749) Produced a French translation of The Principia that remains the standard treatment to this day. Died from complications of childbirth.
Guillaume de l'Hôpital – 43 (1661–1704) Best known for L'Hôpital's rule, the calculus technique for finding the limit of an indeterminate form. What fewer people know is that l'Hôpital didn't discover l'Hôpital's rule: it appears to have been the work of Johann Bernoulli. L'Hôpital paid Bernoulli for the result and claimed it as his own. Still, l'Hôpital was not without mathematical talent (which makes the whole seamy Bernoulli affair all the stranger). His Infinitesimal calculus with applications to curved lines was one of the first calculus textbooks ever published and was widely praised for its clarity of presentation.
Clara Immerwahr – 44 (1870–1915) The first woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in Germany and wife of chemist Fritz Haber. Tragically, she may be best known for her suicide, apparently in response to her husband's enthusiastic participation in poison gas development for the German government during WW–I.
Isaac Barrow – 46 (1630–1677) The other Isaac of 17th century English mathematics and the Salieri to Newton's Mozart. Barrow did work in optics and geometry. More importantly, he is credited with the discovery of what we now call the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. But try to find his name in your calculus book. Leibniz withstood Newton's assaults. Poor Barrow never stood a chance.
Brook Taylor (1685–1731) and Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746). Both guys who invented power series died young. Taylor at 46 and Maclaurin at 48. How weird is that?
James Clerk Maxwell – 48 (1831–1879) Maxwell's distribution. Maxwell's demon. Maxwell's theorem. Maxwell material. And, of course, Maxwell's equations. Any one of which would have put Maxwell in the history books. No other one person more completely divides the modern era from what came before. Between them, Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein built pretty much everything that exists except quantum mechanics (and Maxwell's equations were already relativistic. In your face, Newton!). Productive until the end, Maxwell was struck down by cancer before he reached 50.
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