THE BREAKTHROUGH
Researchers at the Friedrich-Karl Institute for Academic Longevity have announced a major advance in anti-ageing after successfully separating biological age from academic age.
The discovery followed a study of 1,240 German academics. Participants continued to marry, have children, develop hypertension and require increasingly powerful reading glasses while remaining institutionally part of the wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs, the next generation of German scholars.
Dr. Dr. habil. Johannes Konstantin Mühlenberg is among the institute’s most successful cases. He is forty-eight, eighteen years beyond his doctorate, author of three books and father of two. He has taught at nine universities, supervised doctoral researchers and completed his Habilitation six years ago, but remains young.
Mühlenberg himself sees nothing unusual in this. Early career, he explained, is not a subjective identity but an objective institutional position. He does not hold a chair and is therefore Nachwuchs. The fact that several people he once taught now hold chairs merely demonstrates that academic development is non-linear.
I asked whether being forty-eight complicated the description.
“Only biologically.”
Professor Dieter-Albrecht von Hohenfels, seventy-three, directs the study. He became a full professor at thirty-four and has occupied the same chair since 1987. “When I was young, people became professors too quickly,” he told me. “We didn’t have time to develop.”
Mühlenberg agreed. Hohenfels, he pointed out, had been forced to learn many things after becoming permanently employed.
“I have had the advantage of learning them before.”
His development is entering its nineteenth year.
THE TEST
I watched Mühlenberg undergo his annual assessment. A technician confirmed three books, eighteen years since doctorate, Habilitation, international appointments, teaching, doctoral supervision and two children before reaching the final question.
“Chair?”
“No.”
She entered the result.
“Early career.”
Mühlenberg appeared satisfied. Turning forty-eight, he explained afterwards, was personally significant but academically irrelevant unless it coincided with an appointment procedure. His daughter entering university next year was similarly a family milestone and should not be confused with his own professional emergence.
He has become careful about these distinctions.
“My daughter is young in the conventional sense.”
“And you?”
“In the German sense.”
The institute has stronger cases. A 52-year-old historian remains Nachwuchs despite having supervised two researchers who subsequently became professors, while a 55-year-old sociologist has been an emerging scholar since 2001 and now teaches a seminar in which her first book appears under “classic approaches.” Researchers originally expected a middle-aged phase between Nachwuchs and senior professor, but after twelve years of observation none has been located.
Mühlenberg is not surprised. Middle age, he explained, would imply a middle position.
“There isn’t one.”
THE HABILITATION RESET
The most effective rejuvenating procedure is the Habilitation. Subjects typically enter after a doctorate, several postdoctoral appointments, publications and years of university teaching. Five or six years later, another substantial work and formal examination establish their capacity for independent research and teaching.
Mühlenberg began at thirty-six with a doctorate, a book and eleven years of teaching. At forty-two he received the venia legendi, formally confirming his authorization to teach the discipline he had taught since twenty-five.
He remembers the ceremony as the moment he became academically independent. When I pointed out that he had already been conducting independent research for more than a decade, he agreed immediately. That, he explained, was independent research before formal confirmation of independence, which should not be confused with independent research conducted after independence had been independently confirmed.
“It’s a completely different independence.”
Within weeks, funding applications again described him as an emerging scholar with considerable future potential. Mühlenberg regarded this as encouraging.
“You don’t want people to think your potential is behind you.”
Researchers have modelled a second Habilitation but have not attempted one on humans. Several simulations returned the subject to graduate school.
MAINTENANCE
Academic youth can subsequently be preserved through the Privatdozent system. Habilitated scholars may continue teaching to retain their authorization to teach even when no salaried position is attached to the teaching.
Mühlenberg taught a weekly seminar to twenty-two students under these conditions. He did not consider himself unpaid because his income came from another research project, although he conceded after some discussion that the project did not pay him to teach the seminar and the university did not pay him for it either.
He preferred the expression “not separately remunerated.”
“Isn’t that unpaid?”
“No. Unpaid sounds as though nobody is paying me.”
“Who is paying you for the seminar?”
“Nobody. But that is too narrow a way of looking at it.”
The seminar maintained his authorization to teach, demonstrated continued commitment to students and prevented a teaching gap that might concern a future appointment committee. Mühlenberg therefore regarded not being separately remunerated as an investment.
“How has the investment performed?”
“I’ve been shortlisted twice.”
The institute’s records include Privatdozenten who have maintained similar conditions for more than a decade without developing detectable permanence. One subject has done so for seventeen years. The arrangement has survived several centuries of German philosophy.
THE APPOINTMENT PROCEDURE
Mühlenberg has applied for eleven chairs and regards the record positively. His earliest applications were developmental; later he began reaching shortlists, and twice he was ranked second.
“Second is excellent,” he told me.
I asked whether second place carried any employment.
“Obviously not.”
“Then what does it carry?”
“Recognition.”
He explained that appointment procedures should be understood longitudinally. His first serious committee wanted greater international experience, so he went abroad. Another later preferred somebody more deeply embedded in German academic networks, demonstrating the importance of returning. A third wanted greater breadth; after Mühlenberg broadened his profile, a fourth questioned its coherence.
I asked what conclusion he had drawn.
“That I’m competitive across several different profiles.”
He has recently stopped changing his research agenda substantially after appointment feedback. Mühlenberg considers this another sign of development: an early-career scholar must respond to feedback, whereas a more mature early-career scholar must learn when not to.
The distinction has taken him several applications to master.
THE AMERICAN ANOMALY
The study encountered difficulties when Professor Tyler J. Knox, twenty-nine, arrived from a private university outside Boston. Knox completed his doctorate at twenty-three, published a highly cited paper on quantum machine learning, founded a startup and received tenure at twenty-eight after another university attempted to hire him. He held a named professorship, directed a laboratory with nine doctoral students and had taught four courses.
Hohenfels reviewed the file twice.
“One book?”
“Yes.”
“No Habilitation?”
“No.”
“Full professor?”
“Yes.”
The German team suspected a data-entry error. Knox explained that the competing offer had accelerated his tenure review and that an alumnus had subsequently endowed his chair. When Hohenfels asked whether the alumnus was an academic, Knox explained that his field was refrigeration.
The Germans closed the file.
Mühlenberg was more open-minded. American universities operated differently, he explained, and one should avoid imposing German categories on another academic culture.
“Would he qualify for a chair here?”
Mühlenberg laughed.
“At twenty-nine?”
I reminded him that Hohenfels had obtained his chair at thirty-four.
“That was 1987.”
He said this in the tone normally used for medieval evidence.
Knox was excluded from the study because American academics appeared susceptible to extreme premature ageing under conditions not approved for use in Germany.
EXCELLENCE THERAPY
German subjects responded more predictably to Excellence initiatives, which combine high prestige with predetermined expiration. One participant entered an Excellence Cluster at forty-one as a Senior Emerging Investigator. Three years later, reviewers praised the cluster’s sustainable contribution to German research and renewed it for another seven years, while the investigator’s contract ended as scheduled. At follow-up, the cluster had matured considerably and the investigator remained promising.
Mühlenberg has undergone two Excellence treatments himself. Both increased his international visibility and both ended on schedule.
“Excellent projects,” he told me.
“Both ended your employment.”
“Yes. But they weren’t employment projects.”
“What were they?”
“Research projects.”
“You were employed by them.”
“Exactly.”
He regarded the distinction as important.
Anna has retained the same moving company since 2009 and keeps several boxes packed between appointments. Mühlenberg once considered this pessimistic but has revised his view.
“She has become very efficient.”
KEEPING THE YOUNG YOUNG
At forty-five, Mühlenberg attended an Early Career Researcher Development Day covering publication strategy, international networking, scholarly independence and combining an academic career with the possibility of eventually having a family. He already had three books, an international network and two children but found the workshop useful.
“You can always learn something.”
During the publication session, he recognized the facilitator from a conference in 2007. Two scholars displayed on the slides as examples of successful career development had previously asked Mühlenberg to write references for them.
I asked whether this felt strange.
“No. They developed faster.”
The afternoon workshop required participants to identify a senior mentor. Mühlenberg selected Hohenfels, who first became his mentor in 2003. Their relationship has provided unusual continuity: Mühlenberg has changed institutions nine times, while Hohenfels has changed offices once.
Mühlenberg sees an advantage in this arrangement.
“Dieter always knows where I am.”
SECOND-GENERATION YOUTH
Researchers are now documenting cases in which academic youth survives long enough to become hereditary. One 50-year-old participant has a 24-year-old daughter beginning a doctorate, making both members of the next generation. They were recently invited to the same Nachwuchs reception, where the mother attended a workshop on establishing an independent research identity while the daughter attended one on beginning to establish an independent research identity in the adjoining room.
Another participant’s son expects to complete his doctorate within three years. If his father’s condition remains stable, the institute may observe an emerging scholar produce another emerging scholar before the first has fully emerged. Several participants now have grandchildren, which Hohenfels regards as an especially promising area for longitudinal research.
Mühlenberg sees no conceptual difficulty.
“Nachwuchs can have Nachwuchs.”
He paused.
“That’s actually the point of the word.”
RAPID SENESCENCE
The institute has nevertheless identified one reliable cause of academic ageing: a permanent professorship.
A 52-year-old participant who had spent twenty-four years as Nachwuchs received a chair on a Thursday. The following Monday, his university newsletter described him as “one of our senior colleagues.” Researchers examined the four-day interval but detected no biological change.
Mühlenberg saw nothing mysterious in the transformation. Four days earlier the man had lacked a chair; now he had one.
“So he became senior over the weekend?”
“No. He became Professor.”
“And that made him senior?”
“Exactly.”
He seemed pleased that I was beginning to understand.
MORTALITY
The German treatment cannot yet prevent biological ageing. The institute’s longest-observed subject remained Nachwuchs until sixty-one, when he died. His obituary described him as one of Germany’s most promising scholars of early modern philosophy and lamented that his untimely death had deprived the discipline of a researcher from whom much could still be expected.
A chair in his field became available eighteen months later.
Mühlenberg knew him and remembered him as an excellent scholar who had been “very close.”
“How close?”
“There were possibilities.”
“Before he died?”
“Obviously before.”
He considered the question strange.
Another subject, a 58-year-old Privatdozent, died while preparing his ninth application for a professorship. His appointment committee observed a minute’s silence before returning to the shortlist.
Hohenfels regards mortality as the principal obstacle to indefinite academic youth. “We can keep them Nachwuchs,” he explained. “Keeping them alive is another department.”
The university has established an interdisciplinary working group to examine whether scholars who die before obtaining a chair can be classified posthumously as Emerging Emeriti. Several committee members believe applicants should demonstrate evidence of future potential.
Mühlenberg supports the proposal.
“Death shouldn’t end your career prospects.”
The institute has applied for fifteen years of funding to determine whether academic youth can survive death itself. Hohenfels, seventy-three, will serve as principal investigator.
He plans to retire next year.