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Everyone knows that mental agility goes down with age. For ordinary physicists, as they age, they compensate for it with increasing experience and background knowledge. Someone who only starts out when they are old have all the odds stacked out against them. They have neither sufficient experience nor mental agility. They often have less time as well.

Given all this, are there examples of successful physicists who only started out when they were old?

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I don't think this question really adds value to the site; also, it is arguably off topic (e.g. according to what is currently in our FAQ). If anyone thinks this is a good and appropriate enough question to be reopened, comment here or bring it up in the chat room. – David Zaslavsky♦ Apr 17 '11 at 5:56
I think that there exist similar threads the past month or so, asking if older people could start physics. Example: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/7327/… . – anna v Apr 17 '11 at 6:17
Some others have been deleted for reasons of moderation. It is a legitimate question for a new entrant to ask, if age of starting physics is important. A list of late successful entrants to the field might be good for a wiki. – anna v Apr 17 '11 at 6:21
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@anna (2 comments up): True, but I wasn't a fan of those questions anyway. I don't think we should have too many of them, since they're only tangentially related to the main focus of the site. Besides, the other questions were more along the lines of "how do I/can I start studying physics at age ___?" That sort of question invites answers that give specific advice, which would be useful to other people coming across the question later. Just making a list of people who have done it doesn't seem to do anything for other visitors to the site. – David Zaslavsky♦ Apr 17 '11 at 6:26
In any case people wanting to comment with names could do it at the comments even if closed.True, one should not encourage this sort of question. Then we get "how many were late in speaking" "how many were child prodigies" etc. – anna v Apr 17 '11 at 7:10
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closed as off topic by David Zaslavsky♦ Apr 17 '11 at 5:54

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