Age and team of great scientific discoveries in China

Abstract

The association between age and great scientific discoveries can shed light on the nature of creativity, the underlying mechanism of knowledge creation and scientific progress, and the design of research policy that support scientists . Not limited to the academic world, it can also provide implications of aging population, education policies and even the economic growth. Scientific and technological activities are suggested to increasingly depend on teamwork since the knowledge accumulates with the advancement of science and technology . Therefore, the age and team of great scientific discoveries, as well as the interaction between age and team deserve an in-depth exploration. China has been the world’s second largest contributor to high-quality scientific articles in 2016 . The dramatic growth of China’s science has attracted the world’s attention, as well as the development of Chinese scientists who made great scientific contributions. Given the fluctuated political and economical reconstructing China has experienced, the age and team of Chinese scientists who have made great scientific discoveries may deviate from previous claims. To our knowledge, this study is a first try to depicted the whole landscape of the age and team of scientists who are awarded the national scientific awards recognised by China’s national science and technology awards system. Based on the 8,744 award records of five national scientific awards from 1999 to 2015 , and the demographic information of scientists, we investigated the age and team of China’s great scientific discoveries on which the scientists obtained awards based. We took advantage of the information of scientific discoveries to find the year when scientists created their representative work of scientific discoveries and calculate their ages in that year. Utilising descriptive analysis and Poisson regression analysis, we found that: 1.The age distribution is a double-peak distribution, in which the first peak is in middle life(30s to 40s) and the second is at 60s. Moreover, we observed a shifting age distribution during the three periods with five-year time interval. With time passing by, the second age peak become weaker and even perish at the third episode. 2.The average age at which scientists produced their representative work remained steady. 3.Female scientists write the representative articles younger than their male colleagues. The average age of male scientists is 41.4, 3 years older than that of female scientists. Furthermore, the average age of female is younger than that of male in all six disciplines . The outstanding performance come earlier on average in Information Science than that in other fields. 4. Taking the awarded order into account, scientists who are at the top of the list of winners are older than those who are listed behind when they created their representative work. 5. The team consists of three to six scientists and remained stable during the last two decades. The team size of scientists of Mathematics and Physics, and Information Sciences is smaller than that of other disciplines. 6. There is a U-shaped relationship between the age at which scientists got the highest degree and the age at which they made great scientific contributions. This relationship also exists between the team size and the age. Besides, scientists who held overseas highest degrees are older than their peers when they made great scientific discoveries. Appendix: Figures, tables and description of data source, data cleaning process and regression results are shown in the attached file.