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passive_fist comments on The mystery of Brahms - Less Wrong Discussion
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Phil, did I ever recommend Galenson's Old Masters and Young Geniuses to you? I think you'd appreciate it; an economist whose hobby is art history tries to figure out whether artists get better or worse with age, and finds two clusters, one of which relentlessly gets better and one of which peaks early, and identifies the core difference between them. (The first are more like artisans, who slowly get better at their craft through experimentation, and the second make conceptual contributions, but once those are made, they're spent.)
I wonder if this view is useful for studying the careers of scientists as well. I can certainly think of scientists who would fall into either category. Gauss and John Bardeen were probably artisans, whereas Einstein was more of a conceptual contributor.
Norbert Wiener might be something of an anomaly: A child prodigy who also had a pretty amazing career later in life. Although that's not surprising since Wiener is anomalous in a bunch of other ways as well.