THE world’s most brilliant scientific geniuses are the psychological bedfellows of car thieves and muggers: they are at their most active before their mid-thirties, and they do so to impress the opposite sex.

Breakthroughs such as the structure of DNA and the laws of thermodynamics sprang from the same motivations that drive young men to crime, research in New Zealand has suggested.

The careers of great male scientists, like those of male criminals, are most prolific in the first flush of youth, according to the study. Both groups pursue their chosen paths with greatest panache before the age of 35 and both lose their enthusiasm when they marry. The findings seem to support an observation by Einstein, who in 1942, at the age of 63, wrote: “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.” Einstein published his special theory of relativity in 1905, when he was 26.

In the study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the University of Canterbury, examined the biographies of 280 great scientists. He found that 65 per cent of the mostly male researchers had made their biggest discovery before their mid-thirties. Their “productivity curve” follows almost exactly that of male common criminals, whose illegal activities peak in late adolescence and early adulthood.

The explanation, according to Dr Kanazawa, is simple: they are seeking to impress women with their virtuosity. “They do whatever they do to get laid,” he said. “Scientific productivity indeed fades with age. Two thirds will have made their most significant contributions before their mid-thirties.” Marriage, he found, dampens men’s drive in science and crime. Within five years of marrying, almost a quarter of the scientists had published their last work of any great importance.

“Scientists rather quickly desist after their marriage, while unmarried scientists continue to make great scientific contributions later in their lives,” Dr Kanazawa said. Male criminals also tend to stop committing crimes after marrying.

Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs were made by youthful researchers. Sir Isaac Newton described the period between 1665 and 1666, when he was 22 and 23, as “the prime of my age for invention”, and he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University at 26.

James Watson, who with Francis Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, was 25 at the time, and never produced anything else to match it.

Dr Kanazawa, whose work is reported in New Scientist, said that a “single psychological mechanism” probably explained the similarity between scientists and criminals. In young and single men, testosterone levels are high, leading to risk-taking and creativity. Once a man settles down, testosterone levels fall and so does his creative or criminal output. His first loyalty is to his family and offspring, rather than to his work. An exception to the rule, however, is Sir Alexander Fleming, who was 47, and had been married for 13 years, when he discovered penicillin.

There were too few major female scientists in Dr Kanazawa’s sample to draw firm conclusions but anecdotal examples suggest that they are more likely to buck the trend. Marie Curie was 36 when she obtained her doctorate, eight years after marrying, and it was not until seven years later that she succeeded in isolating pure radium. Rosalind Franklin, however, was in her early 30s and when she took the X-ray images of DNA that proved critical to Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix. She never married.

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