There is a selection bias - 'child prodigy discovers X' is a little more newsworthy than 'eccentric person discovers X after lifetime of mucking around'. I exp

There is a selection bias - 'child prodigy discovers X' is a little more newsworthy than 'eccentric person discovers X after lifetime of mucking around'. I expect that the average age is probably older than 30 [1]. But 35 year old scientists making discoveries about science doesn't make a very good story; neither does an entire field making slow steady progress. People like to have one genius to study. Same as how history tends to remember heads of state, but all the actual work is often done by small, highly effective groups of people who nobody remembers (eg, parliaments - I can name a couple of European monarchs from the olden days, but nobody from the Dutch Republic or the East India Company leadership). [1] http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/age-amp-science-do-scientists-make-their-best-discoveries-during http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/age-amp-science...