Lifespan and longevity among representatives of creative professions

Abstract

The article presents data on mean age of death of 49 064 representatives of various creative professions: visual artists (painters, sculptors, architects, n = 8 458), musicians (composers, conductors, singers, pianists, violinists, etc. n = 7 883), writers and poets (n = 11 488), scientists (n = 21 235). The mean age of death among writers and poets was significantly (p < 0.001) less than that in visual artists, musicians and scientists whereas scientists lived longer than representatives of other categories (p < 0.001). Women lived longer than men of any studied categories (p < 0.02). It was shown that the mean age of death gradually but irregularly increased since the 1st century A. C. until the 20th century in any professional cohort. Visual artists-men in 20th century lived longer than in previous historical periods (p < 0.001). Scientists both females and males in 20th century lived longer then these in 19th century (p < 0.001). The first five places of long-livers among men belong to Nobel prize winners (78,8 yrs.), academicians (72,7 yrs.) and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (71,7 yrs.), conductors (71,1 yrs.) and scientists (71,0 yrs.). Rock-musicians, author's song singer and poets lived less than other categories (43,6; 53,6 and 61,6 yrs. respectively). Among women leading long-livers were conductors (83,2 yrs.), harp-players (80,9 yrs.), academicians of the RAS (80,3 yrs.), clavesin-players (79,1 yrs.) and violinists (78,2 yrs.). Among women, less lived rock-musicians (37,6 yrs.), author's songs singers (51,4), horns and woodwinds instruments players (59,0 yrs.). Relative number of nonagenarians (90+) was much higher among women as compared to men. The values were as 43.75% of harp-players, 33.33% of conductors, 29.17% of architects, 20% of violinists and viola-players and 18.99% sculptors for women, and 16.67% of Nobel prize winners, 12.12% of conductors, 7.51% of academicians, 7.44% of violinists and 7.0% of scientists survived 90+ years among men. Centenarians were 8.33% of academicians and architects, 6.25% of harp-players and 4.22% of writers-poets among women, and only 0.76% of pianists, 0.45% of scientists and 0.42% of violinists were centenarians among men. Our data are in agreement with the opinion that high intellect and education directly correlate with longer life span and longevity.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.