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I've heard similar arguments about age and physics. I've always theorized that as time progresses the body of work one must be familiar with in order to make new contributions grows as well. We should therefore expect that in modern times, major contributions should come from more experienced individuals.

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> I've always theorized that as time progresses the body of work one must be familiar with in order to make new contributions grows as well.

As I see it, this is not too big a problem. Usually people get on a very narrow path and specialize in a tiny part of a larger discipline. There's a lot of new research being done in algebra, analysis, geometry, statistics, whatever; but as a researcher you are expected to choose a very narrow sub-sub -...-sub-discipline and ignore everything else. That's very much doable. An analyst who can't read number theory papers is not a rarity. Likely a rule.

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