The Benefits Of Being Nobel
By Hayley Birch
Stop knocking back the pints and you could add another three years to your life. Eat four cloves of garlic a day and you’ll gain another two. Stop strapping yourself to telegraph poles in thunderstorms and you could extend your life expectancy by twenty years.
If you followed the health experts’ advice, you might expect to live to three hundred, given all those extra years. Most of us, however, are willing to accept our fleeting existence in exchange for a little more excitement in our lives – like strapping ourselves to telegraph poles in thunderstorms.
But what if there was another way besides teetotalism and garlic breath? Well, according to new research, there is. You just need to be a genius.
Scientists at the University of Warwick compared the life expectancy of Nobel Prize winners to those merely nominated for the accolade, and found winners lived on average 1.4 years longer.
Professor Andrew Oswald hypothesised that the elevation of status associated with winning the prize worked some kind of “health-giving magic”. Well, that’s one way of looking at it, but I’m sure several million in prize money would work miracles for my health too.
The survey’s winners included Albert Einstein (not much to aspire to there then if you want to tag on a couple more years) and Heinrich Otto Wieland, who snuffed it at the ripe old age of eighty having devoted his life to investigating “the constitution of the bile acids and related substances”. I think I’ll take my chances thanks.
Read more about Hayley and revel in her writing here.
If you followed the health experts’ advice, you might expect to live to three hundred, given all those extra years. Most of us, however, are willing to accept our fleeting existence in exchange for a little more excitement in our lives – like strapping ourselves to telegraph poles in thunderstorms.
But what if there was another way besides teetotalism and garlic breath? Well, according to new research, there is. You just need to be a genius.
Scientists at the University of Warwick compared the life expectancy of Nobel Prize winners to those merely nominated for the accolade, and found winners lived on average 1.4 years longer.
Professor Andrew Oswald hypothesised that the elevation of status associated with winning the prize worked some kind of “health-giving magic”. Well, that’s one way of looking at it, but I’m sure several million in prize money would work miracles for my health too.
The survey’s winners included Albert Einstein (not much to aspire to there then if you want to tag on a couple more years) and Heinrich Otto Wieland, who snuffed it at the ripe old age of eighty having devoted his life to investigating “the constitution of the bile acids and related substances”. I think I’ll take my chances thanks.
Read more about Hayley and revel in her writing here.
Image: W
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