Watson discovered the structure of DNA when he was 24.
Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle when he was 25.
Newton claimed to have developed his gravitational theory when
he was 24. Darwin embarked on the Beagle when he was 22. I could
go on for hours like this. But wait. Crick was 37 when he
discovered the structure of DNA. Schroedinger was 38 when he
published on wave mechanics. Newton cast his gravitational
theory in mathematical form when he was 37, his earlier insights
likely being purely speculative. Darwin finalized the theory of
selection when he was 47 (Wallace being 33 at the time.) Of
course I may be biased here. Ever so many examples and
counterexamples don't prove a point. One has to look at the data
that's out there. Falagas et al. (2008) ask "At what age do
biomedical scientists do their best work?" and answer with the
following age histogram of the top 5 highly cited articles for a
random subset of 300 bioscientists: (The corresponding histogram
for the single-most cited paper looks