576 



AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



in the natural and descriptive sciences/ Their 

 success probably depends more on innate 

 genius and less on persistent work. There 

 are more " prodigies " in mathematics than in 

 any other science, and they are more likely to 

 maintain their promise. In this and in cer- 

 tain other respects mathematics is related to 

 music and chess. 



Nearly all the men obtain recognition be- 

 tween the ages of 30 and 45. They do their 

 work earlier and have their ideas still earlier. 

 Those who do not have their ideas before they 

 are thirty are not likely to have them, and 

 those who do not do good work under forty- 

 five are not likely to do it. Not a single man 

 over fifty-five has attained a place on the list, 

 and only one man over forty-five has attained 

 a place as high as the fifth hundred. The 

 average age of those added to the thousand is 

 38.1 years and of those dropped from it 53.6 

 years. The corresponding median ages are 

 37.9 and 50.9 years. The writer knows a num- 

 ber of men who think that they have been 

 hindered from doing research work by teach- 

 ing or other distractions and intend to take 

 up such work later, as when they retire on a 

 pension, but they will almost inevitably fail. 



While those added to the thousand are com- 

 paratively young, there are only six under 

 thirty years of age, and only the same num- 

 ber in the complete list of the thousand 'lead- 

 ing scientific men. This is significant and dis- 

 quieting. A man of genius is likely to do his 

 work at an early age and to receive prompt 

 recognition. Kelvin was appointed full pro- 

 fessor at Glasgow at 22, Thomson at Cam- 

 bridge at 26, Eutherf ord at McGill at 27. Men 

 of science of this age and rank simply do not 

 exist in America at the present time; nor is it 

 likely that we are faring better in scholarship, 

 in literature and in art. It will be shown 

 further on that the increase in the number of 

 scientific men of standing is only about one 



* In the complete list of the thousand the young- 

 est man among the first 20, among the first 50 

 and among the first 100 is in each case a mathe- 

 matician. 



half so large as the increase in the population 

 of the country. 



It is sometimes urged that our men of 

 genius are drawn into medicine, law and busi- 

 ness owing to the large financial rewards of 

 these pursuits. Any one acquainted person- 

 ally with some of those who earn or get the 

 largest money returns will probably doubt 

 whether they are in fact men of genius su- 

 perior to our scientific men. The hundred 

 physicians who have the largest incomes se- 

 lected from the hundred thousand physicians 

 of the country, and the hundred multi-million- 

 aires selected from the million men of busi- 

 ness, do not obviously surpass in ability or 

 character the hundred leading scientific men 

 selected from five thousand. 



It is indeed probable that the conditions ex- 

 isting in this country are paralleled in Great 

 Britain, Germany and France. In no coun- 

 try does there seem to be a group of younger 

 men of genius, ready to fill the places of the 

 great men of the last generation. This holds 

 not, only for science but also for other forms 

 of activity. There is no living peer of Lin- 

 coln, Bismarck or Cavour. An Academy of 

 Letters is just now being planned in Great 

 Britain, and its proposed membership is 

 trivial compared with what it might have 

 been in the middle of the Victorian era. It 

 may be argued that we suffer from an illu- 

 sion of perspective, that many a newspaper 

 writer is the equal of the men of letters of the 

 past, that our young doctors of philosophy 

 would discover laws of motion if Newton had 

 not anticipated them. But it would appear to 

 be a sufficient answer to write the names of 

 Kipling, Barrie, Shaw, Wells and Chesterton 

 besides the names of Carlyle, Kuskin, Mill, 

 Spencer, Tennyson, Browning, George Eliot, 

 Meredith, Dickens and Thackeray, or the 

 names of the leading British, German or 

 French scientific men now active with the 

 corresponding list for forty years ago. 



It is doubtless in part a question of relativ- 

 ity. By the nature of things there can only 

 be a limited number of famous men, and it is 

 not fair to compare a period of twenty years 



