The Nobel Exception

The Nobel Prize is a lot more than a medal.Winners get $1.4million and the world's best resume line.Here's another thing to life under"life's nor fair":Nobel winners also live longer.New research from the University of Warwick says that academics who get the fateful phone call from Sweden stick around about two years longer than colleagues who don't make the final list.The effect mirrors what's been seen before in Oscar winners,whose life spans grow with every statue they take home.Since only four people have ever won multiple Nobels,though-and one,Marie Curie,had a short life because of her prizewinning work on dangerous radiation-the researchers couldn't document a truly identical trend.Still,they were able to figure out that,as with Oscars,it wasn't the cash that did the trick.Apparently,the key to long life among Nobel laureates was simply having the bragging rights.
The research has some lessons for mere mortals,too：it throws new light on an ongoing argument about why people of high social status tend to live longer,regardless of how much health care they get.One theory holds that winners-of prizes,but also in the game of life-are so buoyed by their achievements that their brains are"buffeted against any subsequent adversities",says the University of Toronto's Donald Redelmier,who studies the Oscar phenomenon,In other words,stress doesn't bother there folks as much.Redelmeier's won explanation?After you're reached the pinnacle,you'd be quite disinclined to be seen drunk in public if you've got a Nobel Prize,"he says.Unless,of course,you're tipsy from a little celebratory champagne of,for that matter,a toast to your longevity.