At what age do creative professionals from various fields peak?

It doesn't depend on the field of creativity; it depends on the person. At a basic level, creativity can be divided into two types - conceptual and experimental. Conceptual thinkers tend to produce great work early in their careers, where as experimental artists don't peak until later in life. In his essay "Late Bloomers", Malcom Gladwell discusses a study done by University Of Chicago economist David Galenson, in which he explored the popular assumption that precocity is a deciding factor in genius. It isn't. Galenson found that some people did their best work at the beginning of their careers, and some at the end. He started with poetry. T. S. Eliot wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" at twenty-three. But at the other end of the scale, Robert Frost was forty-eight when he wrote “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” This pattern was also true in film. Whereas Orson Welles was just 25 when he directed "Citizen Kane", Alfred Hitchcock directed "Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief,” "Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho” between his fifty-fourth and sixty-first birthdays. In literature, for every Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote "Everything Is Illuminated" at nineteen, there is Ben Fountain, who just produced his first novel, the much celebrated 'Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk' in his mid-fifties, after twenty-four years of trying. Picasso was twenty when he painted his masterpiece, “Evocation: The Burial of Casagemas,” and he painted most of the greatest works of his career before the age of twenty-six. Cézanne on the other hand, was in his mid-sixties when he produced the bulk of his masterpieces. In his book, "Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity," Galenson argues that prodigies like Picasso are “conceptual" - they start with a clear idea of where they want to go, and then they execute it. But late bloomers work almost entirely experimentally. From the book; The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error. Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal. Cézanne once made a subject sit for him a hundred and fifty times before abandoning the portrait. He would paint a scene, then repaint it, then paint it again. Mark Twain fiddled and despaired and revised and gave up on “Huckleberry Finn” so many times that the book took him nearly a decade to complete. Ben Fountain once wrote and discarded around five hundred pages of material for one of his short stories. Late bloomers are such because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error takes a long time to come to fruition. It's not even that they started their craft later in life - Cezanne, like Picasso, had been producing work since his early twenties - it's just that they'll appear lost, or underachieve during those early years, until they find their way. Prodigies have a drive, a determination, and a clarity of concept that makes the execution comparatively effortless. If you're trying to work out when a certain person will peak, look at their work; do they find their voice easily? Or do they labour for days and weeks, constantly throwing out drafts and starting again? Of course if you're trying to work out when you'll peak - or if you're worried you already have - the only answer is to keep going. Creativity may have two basic types, but regardless, the goal is the same; to do what you love, peak or no peak. Sources: Late Bloomers by Malcolm Gladwell; http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all Old Masters & Young Geniuses by David Galenson; http://www.amazon.com/Old-Masters-Young-Geniuses-Creativity/dp/0691133808

's answer does a good job of addressing this from the perspective of the individual creator, but you also have to consider the way each specific creative profession is set up. For example, the career path of a scientist in most of the west gives you this long period dedicated to nothing but your work while you're getting your PhD. During this time, the non-work-related stuff is mostly taken care of (or ignored). You don't have to struggle holding down two jobs and can just do your science. This contributes, I think, to the fact that we see many more scientists peaking early. It's this early time that they're most free to focus on the problems that interest them. Later, when they're teaching and publishing and often administrating, the science can take a backseat and their career comes to the front. This is also true in some of the creative fields, writers often do their best work when they're young and have no expenses and can just work. Musicians too. But, again, when they get older and have a following, non-creative issues come to the front. But for movie directors, the early years are often filled with hustling and apprenticing and trying to break in. It takes years to develop enough clout for people to trust you with the large sums of money it takes to make a film and it's only once you're established that you have the resources (and collaborators) to really focus on your work. This is even more true in TV where it takes even longer to become established. The top show runners tend to be in their 40s or 50s. And the creative industry where I see this the most is architecture. In the school years, when a scientist might be doing his best work, an architect is still learning the craft. Once out, there's a long period of apprenticeship and if you're bold enough to go out on your own, it takes even longer to be able to do unique projects that can give you a name. Consequently  a "young" architect is in his 40s and they tend to peak in their 50s.

It used to be widely believed that mathematicians and physicists generally did their most important and original work in their mid- to late-twenties (i.e. during or shortly after obtaining their PhDs), and that if they hadn't earned a Fields Medal or a Nobel Prize by this age then they probably never would. But many people believe this is no longer the case. Whereas in the past it was frequently 'lone geniuses', such as a Newton or an Einstein, who made the important breakthroughs in mathematics and physics, nowadays, due largely to the  increase in sophistication, complexity and specialization that both these disciplines have undergone in the last fifty years or so, research is less solitary and more collaborative. An individual's creative output is therefore dependent on the network of fellow researchers that he connects with, and this network will need time to grow. For this reason, many researchers in mathematics and physics now do their most important and creative work at a later age than previously - possibly in their mid-thirties or even later in some cases. And some exceptional researchers continue to do important work well into their 50s or 60s. Another factor in this trend is the rapid advances in the tools and technologies a researcher has access to, such as faster computers, better software and more sophisticated scientific apparatus. All of these things increase, year on year, a researcher's chances of doing important and original work, and thereby prolong his period of creativity.

In an essay titled "Age and the Entrepreneur" ("Part 1", although there don't appear to ever have been other parts), quotes Dr. Dean Simonton's paper "Age and Outstanding Achievement: What Do We Know After a Century of Research?": At one extreme, some fields are characterized by relatively early peaks, usually around the early 30s or even late 20s in chronological units, with somewhat steep descents thereafter, so that the output rate becomes less than one-quarter the maximum. This age-wise pattern apparently holds for such endeavors as lyric poetry, pure mathematics, and theoretical physics... The typical trends in other endeavors may display a leisurely rise to a comparatively late peak, in the late 40s or even 50s chronologically, with a minimal if not largely absent drop-off afterward. This more elongated curve holds for such domains as novel writing, history, philosophy, medicine, and general scholarship. http://pmarchive.com/age_and_the_entrepreneur Andreessen says "I haven't been able to find a PDF of the paper online but you can read a largely intact cached HTML version courtesy of Google Scholar": http://64.233.179.104/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=cache%3ASwZgJUGYOUMJ%3Apsychology.ucdavis.edu%2Fsimonton%2Fpubs%2FAgeAchievement.pdf+

Dr Kanazanawa at LSE would argue that it's not  age but marriage that causes a decrease in genius, and that similar mechanisms account for a drop in crime after people marry in what he calls the crime-genius connection. http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JRP2003.pdf As an anecdote, check out Paul ErdÅ‘s, who was amazingly productive until much later than most mathematicians.  He also never married, never had a family, and never really even settled down- preferring to live out of a suitcase and just show up to collaborate with people around the world. In the interest of full disclosure, Kanazawa has also managed to piss off many people, including other Psychologists, due to controversial positions on race and attractiveness.  He would not be considered part of main stream psychology, or even evolutionary psychology.

The question is difficult to answer because of how we define the state of 'peak' In a very simple situation imagine an explorer looking for new land Initially he is one of many all looking in different directions He happens to be in a better situation than most due to luck, chance, and skill He finds new land, and is hailed for doing so He then moves on to explore the new land, and has a very  fruitful time doing so. He gets much publicity in this period But now others have moved in and they are doing the development of the land, and after that new people are occupying the land The explorer has had his peak moment He must move on an find new lands or become one of the group of developers He may even decide that finding land is hard work and developing it is easy work, so rest on his laurels and take it easy teaching others how to find land It is not that he has peaked in his creativity, but that the initial creative stage and opportunity has passed The effort to find new land falls to the young because they are more competitve to prove themselves, more able to take risks, more time to make decisions, and more resilient in failure So, in answer to the question, it is not so much a matter of age that creativity peaks, but creativity is basically territorial If you discover a new territory in Science or Art, then you lay claim to that domain. The creative stage is over, but that is not the same as ones creative ability being over. It simply means one then moves onto the next stage, and the next stage may not have the same newsworthyness as the initial discovery Having said that, we know that composers often reach their peak quite young whereas performers of their music may well do so into advanced age Artists mature later, and writers later still This is due to the nature of discipline they are in Mathematical abilities are essentially a talent whereas literary abilities require experience. Child geniuses are more common in the fields of numbers and music as against Art and Literature Apart from that, recent studies indicate that innovation in Science has moved away from individuals to teams. This is partly due to 'Big Science' requiring many approaches to problems Modern Art tends to be more related to style and technique than artistic ability. Modern music is also becoming more dependent on technology and performance as against composition In all, the nature of creativity has changed. If you can design a watch that tells the time then you have solved a problem If you can design a watch that tells the time, reads your pulse, sends a message, takes a photo, and matches the colour of your underwear, then you have solved another problem Today creativity has moved from those who solve problems to those who create problems If you can create a need that no one realises they have then you may well be onto something

I would argue that when they achieve some fame and success has an effect on this. Fame and success lead to comfort, and comfort kills radical thinking and the courage to really push oneself. After all what if you fail?  You have so much more to lose now.

There is a 10 000-rule, which posits that it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to truly master a skill. http://likehack.com/browse?id=1845564 10 000 hours = 416 days = 1250 8-hour workdays = 3,5 years But it about professionalism. The average age of all Nobel Laureates in all prize categories between 1901 and 2011 is 59 years. Youngest nobel laureates - 25 years old, oldest - 90 years old. http://likehack.com/browse?id=1846796