Search

The article discusses the notion that persons endowed with exceptional talents do not live long. Upon superficial observation this belief appears to have some foundation as several famous musicians, poets, actors and writers did not live as long on an average as the general population. A study of the literature on longevity reveals that there are several propositions which have received considerable attention. Among the leading theories found, the following are probably the most outstanding. Longevity depends to some extent upon; family traits or inheritance; the occupation a person follows; the century in which a person lived; the standard of living within which an individual spends his life. As a preliminary experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis the writers computed the mean longevity of several hundred musicians and found little to support it. This did not, of course, produce conclusive results, since other averages were needed for further comparisons. For this purpose, a tabulation was made of the lengths of life of several hundred philosophers and they were found to have slightly greater average longevity than musicians. The difference between the means, however, could not be judged as significant without a more extensive investigation.