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Medical education has historically been characterized by a master-apprentice relationship. In current medical curricula, this didactic method is only found in the master phase when students enter the hospital for apprenticeships. We plea for a re-appreciation of this method in the bachelor-phase to ensure a proper academic training of young medical students. We describe our experience with the Young Excellence Class (YEC) of the Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, a two weekly discussion group in which medical students train their academic skills while discussing scientific articles under guidance of an experienced scientist. In our experience the results of this method are fourfold. First, the students acquire skills that cannot be learned from books or lectures alone: reading, listening, reasoning and arguing. Second, the matured students learn to guide younger students in how to perform a research project and how to write a scientific report. Third, this method can convince talented students to pursue an academic career, also in disciplines such as ageing that are at first sight less attractive for young medical students. Out of the 15 alumni of the YEC, 12 have continued in a PhD trajectory out of which 9 in the field of ageing. Fourth, students can under guidance contribute to scientific output at the highest level, as was shown by two students who published their research as first authors in a high impact journal. Finally, we have shown that the didactic model can also be successfully employed at a different university. Given the successes and the ability to disseminate the method, we encourage others to also adopt the master-apprentice approach in their scientific field and start their own Young Excellence Class.

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Life history theory links human physical and sexual development to longevity. However, there have been no studies on the association of intellectual development with longevity. This observational study investigates the relationship between the onset of intellectual maturity and lifespan through the life histories of composers and creative writers, whose intellectual development can be gauged through their compositions and writings. In these groups we model the relationship between the age at first creative work, and age at death using multilevel regression, adjusting for sex, date of birth, and nationality. Historical biographical records on 1110 musical composers and 1182 creative writers, born in the period 1400 AD through 1915 AD, were obtained from the Oxford Companion to Music and the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Composers and creative writers lived, respectively 0.16 (p = 0.02) and 0.18 (p < 0.01) years longer for each later year of age at first work. When completion of the first creative work is interpreted as a proxy for the onset of intellectual maturity in composers and creative writers, our findings indicate that a later onset of intellectual maturity is associated with higher longevity.