I remember an article on Slashdot (IIRC, can't find it now) that examined big discoveries in science and they found there are either child prodigies or old mast

I remember an article on Slashdot (IIRC, can't find it now) that examined big discoveries in science and they found there are either child prodigies or old masters that make them. Prodigies make a big splash by their early twenties, and then you get people who don't make big contributions until after middle age. Some solutions require an entirely new perspective while others require a lifetime's worth of information and experience to be properly collated I guess.