Man's Prime

Composers, athletes, billiard champions, authors, male cinema stars, philosophers, explorers, painters, scientists all achieve their top performances in their early thirties. This discouraging news for ambitious oldsters of 40 was reported by Psycholo gist Harvey C. Lehman of Ohio University in the current Scientific Monthly.

Professor Lehman, 56, has long devoted himself to a very special study: at what age are man's creative powers at their peak? Talented men, he reports, keep up the quantity of their output fairly well until about 50. But the peak of greatness occurs much earlier. Although there are many individual exceptions, most of the great operas, novels, paintings, scientific discoveries, etc. have been produced by men just rounding 30. This, he finds, coincides with the age at which men sire most children and break most sports records.

Averaging it all up, Professor Lehman arrived at a precise figure for the prime of life: 33.

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