David Galenson

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David W. Galenson (born 1951) is a professor in the Department of Economics and the College at the University of Chicago, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has been a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and the American University of Paris.

He studied at Harvard University, completing his PhD in 1979.

He has become famous through his study of artistic innovation, finding statistical proof that some artists develop their skills early in life (Conceptualists) and some are late bloomers (Experimentalists). He has analysed data from auction houses comparing the value of an artist's works to the age at which they were produced. He has also investigated the nature of innovation in poetry and economics.

He has written two books on these subjects:

Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, published by Harvard University Press, in 2001.
Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, published by Princeton University Press, in 2006.