At what age do you hit the peak of your career?

livemint.com:

in 2019 at the age of 97, scientists breathed a sigh of relief. Many had worried that the committee would not get around to honouring his groundbreaking work on lithium-ion batteries from 1980. Goodenough (who died this year) was the oldest winner of the world’s foremost research prize.

Usually laureates are closer to 55 when they pick up the phone to hear the welcome Swedish accent. But it can take years between the publication of a laureate’s career-defining work and recognition from the Nobel committee. At what age are they at the height of their powers? The answer has changed over time.

Science laureates who received the prize between 1901 and 1950 were, on average, 39 years old when they published their winning paper, according to research published in 1957. But a study of more recent Nobel laureates published in 2019 by Rasmus Bjork of the Technical University of Denmark found that science and economics winners were, on average, 44 at the time of their prizewinning work (see chart 1). Differences between disciplines have lessened.

In the first half of the 20th century physicists and chemists were significantly younger when they made their big contributions (at 35 and 38 respectively) than were medical scientists (42). At the time this was attributed to the birth of modern physics at the turn of the century—spurred by new radiation discoveries, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics—which set the scene for younger scientists to make their mark. Now, however, the ages of peak achievement in each field are much closer, though physicists still tend to be slightly younger than average.