I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end.<p>So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.<p>Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts.<p>I interpret it as the former requiring the creative fireworks of youthful neural elasticity and the latter the depth we associate with lived experience and wisdom.<p>Naturally there are outliers (general relativity in Einstein's early 30s, Shakespeare word play till his late 40s) but I think in general these rules of thumb seem to be a good guide for the <i>very highest</i> achievers and for the most creative periods for us mere mortals.<p>Mediocrity of course is unconstrained by age.
I think pop musicians are capable of doing greater works later, but the perception of pop works are so heavily influenced by the image/presentation of the artist that we view the works as lesser. I don't think there is something fundamentally different about pop music that leads to best works being earlier relative to other genres of music beyond that.
I think a lot is driven by environmental rather than genetic factors. For instance the article mentions that both The Road, and No Country for Old Men were written when Cormack was in his 70s. But very few people in their 70s are even trying to write, let alone get published.<p>I think there's something similar in chess where players tend to peak around their mid to late 30s. But a major issue there is that that's also the age that most players are having children and developing ever more interests. And they're competing against the younger generation which is still dedicating 100% of their life, and time, to chess. Absent some monumental edge, that's a battle you're going to inevitably lose - even if aging factors did not exist.
The best works of Bach and Beethoven are from later in their life, although neither lived to be 85 (65 and 57, respectively), and also wrote great works in their younger years. Bruckner kept improving with age. There are also composers who lost it at a later age: Ravel, famously. Classical music is difficult, so experience does allow a better overall view, something which a lot of short works (such as pop songs) don't need.
Ravel wrote his most famous work, Bolero, after age 50, and suffered a traumatic head injury a few years later. Not a good example, except perhaps that the odds of bad things happening increase with longevity.
> So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.<p>I can, just from feeling, agree to the pop music. About math I would cite the example of Gilbert Strang, who made many books at advanced age, including one at age 86 or other publications well over the 70s. Another example (well not math, but CS) Donald Knuth. I do not know how is the whole statistic, but writing good books, even text books, does not seem to be teenager thing.
On the bright side, most of us were never candidates for inventing relativity, really. I wonder if our mediocrity remains stable, of if we lose a proportional amount of capability as the luminaries did.
Yeah there are quite a few exceptions to this. I've been (re-)reading <i>The Making of the Atomic Bomb</i>, and two of the four people directly involved in the discovery and explanation of nuclear fission were 60 (Hahn and Meitner) the other two (Frisch and Strassman) were in their mid-to-late 30s. Shortly after, Bohr (53) figured out that the oddities of uranium's fission behavior were due to the different activation energies of U-235 and U-238.<p>I think the best place to look for major works late in life is probably historical writing, which calls for accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Looking at the four most recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize in history from 2023-2025 [0], all appear to be north of 50 based on their Wikipedia pages (which give dates of education if not dates of birth), and one is in her 70s [1].<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_History</a>
[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Jones" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Jones</a>