Evening star., 1935-01-06

country worked his way through Yale where
he won the De Forest oratorical prize, and was
made dean of the Yale Law School at AZ.
DERHAPS the success Of youth in the field Of
] science is even more astounding. Yet some
of the Nobel prizes for physics have in recent
years gone to men born after the dawn Of our
century.
In 1888 the Nobel physics prize went to De.
p. A. M. Dirac, who at % had caused q sensa-
ton before the British Association for the
Advancement Of Science by propounding a new
atomic theory. Two years later, in 1882, the
award went to Prof. Werner Hesenberg, who.
though born in 1900, had been acclaimed as
the most fertile contributor to the quantum
theory in Germany.
The great Albert Einstein himself, today past
SO, began his iconoclastic studies of RELATIVELY
at the age of 26, was made professor of physics
at Zurich four years later and was given the
chair of physics at Prague when he was 81
There's also Arthur H. Compton who won the
Nobel prize in physics at IS.
There are also many writer's of novels and
plays who got to work early in life. Perhaps
the most precocious of them all is Noel Coward,
who, at 35, is famous as an actor, a lyricist. .
composer. stage director and one of the rich
est playwrights alive, since he is reputed to have
made $5,000,000 from his writings alone.
Coward was a real child prodigy; he sang
ballads in public at 8, acted in a children'S
fairy play, "The Goldfish" at TO- and toured
the English countryside with group of young
Sters couple of years later Born of musical
tradespeople" who sold banjos, mouth organs
and sheet music near London, Coward had Q
natural bent for music He soon began COM
posing songs and writing plays, but it was not
until after the war that he really began to be
talked about. Today, with such successes as
"Cavalcade" and Design for Living" to his
credit, he no longer needs to borrow from his
stanch friends and admirers, Lynne Fontanne
and Alfred Lunt.
In America the man who has been called
the dean of playwrights. Eugere O'Neill, is &c
years old now, but he won public many years
ago. Twelve years ago he was given the Pulitzer
Prize for Anna Christie" and many of his best
plays, like Emperor JONES'" 'The Hairy Ape"
and Desire Under the Elms,' were written
when he was in his early thirtieS. What's more.
life has been very full for ONell, for he has
been business man, a reporter and a vaudes
vile actor as well as a playwright.
There are other American playwrights who
have written successes in early youth. Elmer
Rice, who has just denounced the critics and
the standards of commercial Broadway In
dramatic terms and has announced his resigna-
ton from the theater at the ripe old age Of A,
made his first sensation with ION Trial. back
in 1914 when he was q mere lad of %. Fifteen
years later they gave him the Pulitzer Prize
for Street Scene"
TO NAME the younger authors would take
too much space. It's SUFFICIENT to remark
that the Pulitzer prizes for fiction and drama
last year went to Carolyn Miller and Sidney
Kingsley, both years under 40, and to remember
that such men Ernest Hemingway and
Michael Arlen have not yet lived two-score
years
It's impossible to enumerate all the bright
boys and girls in all the fields Only recentiy
a youngster named Peter Blume ran of with
the first prize at the Carnegie Art Institute in
Pittsburgh for his puzzling canvas South Of
Scranton" thus following in the line of such
masters as Matisse Picasso and Pascin.
Nor have We been able to touch all the fields
In which life begins long before 40. One Of
them Is prize fighting. but then everybody
knows that for men like Max Baer and Eugene
Tunney. the first 40 years may be the hardest.
thovo OLE tI.a /,