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People rarely get Nobel prizes in the sciences or the Fields medal in math for work done in their 50s and 60s, so the age profiles of athletic and intellectual talent have some resemblance.
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Not according to this interesting article from Nature, published last fall:
"...with a few exceptions — notably the quantum mechanics discoveries of the 1920s and 1930s, which were often made by scientists under 30 — the trend across all fields is towards researchers being older when they produce their greatest work.... Comparing discoveries made before 1905 with after 1985, the average age at which physicists made their discoveries rose from 37 to 50. Chemists' average age rose from 36 to 46 and that of medical scientists from 38 to 45."
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.632.html
