> Prize winner’s age at the time they receive their prizes is steadily increasing over time, though the age when they do their prize-winning work isn’t, suggest

> Prize winner’s age at the time they receive their prizes is steadily increasing over time, though the age when they do their prize-winning work isn’t, suggesting Nobel’s are increasingly being awarded to past work. This could be due to a slowdown of groundbreaking discoveries in the fields the Nobel rewards, or it could be due to the sociology of how prizes get awarded, with my guess being a combination of both. I suspect one factor was the Nobel Comitee just becoming more careful about the risk of hastily awarding a prize for something that initially looks like a great idea but does not pan out later. Let's take the example of the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine awarded to Egas Moniz[1] for the development of lobotomy ("leucotomy")[2]. That particular prize surely did not age well. Perhaps putting a buffer of a couple decades between the work and the award helps avoid such blunders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Egas_Moniz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Egas_Moniz [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy