What about someone who comes up with a good idea but doesn't have the authority to implement it?
Implementing bright ideas from scientists are mostly authority related. Sometimes you need first to make a "boring"career, before you can finally start with your ideas.
When young Gauss had some brilliant ideas about mathematics, he did need no nothing except pen and paper to write down some great "ideas":
"He completed his magnum opus, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, in 1798, at the age of 21—though it was not published until 1801.[13] This work was fundamental in consolidating number theory as a discipline and has shaped the field to the present day".
=> mathematicians can be of really young age to show how great their ideas are. Gauss was already recognised at much younger age than 21 to be a deliverer.
In some cases Physicists also need only pen and paper but more often they do need access to a laboratory or a telescope etc. You need some experiments to deliver evidence as well yourself. And the more costly those experiments the longer you waste time to get to the position in a university to finally be no longer dependent on professors above you to authorise cost, but to decide yourself.
=> Physicists typical older than mathematicians but still mostly relatively young. Einstein, frustrated in not getting a job at a university because he was an obstinate non-conformist... needing a job... worked at low level at a patent office in boredom, but challenged his mind with thinking on how Newton was wrong.
"Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led him to develop his special theory of relativity during his time at the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905, called his annus mirabilis (miracle year), he published four groundbreaking papers, which attracted the attention of the academic world; the first outlined the theory of the photoelectric effect, the second paper explained Brownian motion, the third paper introduced special relativity, and the fourth mass-energy equivalence. That year, at the age of 26, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich "
In biology it takes in general again much longer to get that authority. Francis Crick, co-inventor of DNA, a good example. In 1951 Crick is 35 years old.
Despite some opposition from the lab boss, Sir William Lawrence Bragg, who forbade them to work on the structure of DNA, they managed to unravel the structure of the molecule within two years. In 1953 this led to the famous publication in the scientific journal Nature.
From the Dutch Wiki on Crick. The English Wiki has lots of technical detrails but does not mention this typical hurdle of young bright ideas when you are in the right place (university R&D) but do not have the right boss or have authority yourself.
In Medicine, with its strong authority culture resulting from us commoners "wanting to look up to medical doctors" you need to be on average even more older or succesful in your career.
Archeology etc.
You either have authority and likely already grey hairs... or you are lucky with being rich yourself or have some rich sponsor.
Another aspect is reputation risk.
When Gauss came up on the idea that our world could be in a curved space... he did not publish that idea. It would be too controversial for the narrow minded petty bourgeois culture at that time in Germany.
But he did build the three Gauss Towers to make a triangle measuring experiment.
In a non-curved space the sum of the three angles must be exactly 180.0000000 degrees. In a curved space this can be lower or higher. (if you make a triangle from the North pole to two points on the equator at a quarter of the equator lenght apart, the sum would for example be 270 degrees.
The measurement was unfortunately not accurate enough, not enough digits behind the decimal point, to prove that our space was curved. Our space here is indeed not very much curved.
=> Gauss had that similar great idea as Einstein, a curved space, more than a century earlier, he had the authority to set up an experiment... but the techs were not yet there for the needed accuracy. And Gauss had to be low profile because of his reputation.
But Gauss did not give up.
At some moment, as professor, he got this very bright student Riemann, who had as third choice of graduation curved spaces and Gauss picked happily that one. How much he had influenced Riemann to propose it the story, as I know it, does not tell.
As authority picking the right ideas and minds together can work well.
