Is mathematics a young man's game?

[mheslep]

A couple of things come to mind:

“Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work...”
― Albert Einstein

...

And predating Einstein:

“Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this. When I have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it... the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”

Alexander Hamilton

 

[mathwonk]

That's why I was doing it jk, I couldn't live on my postdoc salary. And every day I was expected to carry off 80,000 pounds of meat, each piece weighing from 150 to 300 pounds while sliding in slippery fat. I definitely earned it. And there was one homicide per year among my 15 or so peers.

You have pointed exactly the choice I faced: continue doing that until I was as old and bent down as the men around me, some still lugging at the same pay in their 50's, assuming I was one of the ones not murdered sooner or sent to prison,

or try another career. The postdoc pay was indeed less at first, but now I am retired on a pension not offered to former luggers. Obviously no one goes into research for the postdoc pay. You have to look past that. If you can't, then research is not for you. I'm not saying its an easy or lucrative life. I'm just observing it is not impossible for someone gifted who really knows he wants it.

In 1981 I was an NSF postdoc at Harvard working for $15,000/year, to support a family of 4 in Harvard square, and that's after getting a PhD and winning a prize offered only to 10 top young researchers per year. But it was worth it to me.

This thread has never been about the competitiveness of academic pay, only whether it is too late or too far out of reach for the OP. He didn't ask whether it was preferable to private industry. For many people that would be "no". But thanks for brining it up. I would not want to encourage him to pursue a career he would later regret.

 

[jk]

You are absolutely right