I hope it's OK to post an answer to my own question since it's community-wiki. Here are a couple of things I found down this rabbit-hole.
This first paper is crap, but ranks high in entertainment value:
Kanazawa, S. “Why productivity fades with age: The crime-genius connection”, Journal of Research in Personality 37(2003), 257-272.
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/JRP2003.pdf
There is another uncanny resemblance between crime and scientific productivity. Coles (1979) study of a representative sample of contemporary mathematicians in the United States demonstrates that, while the career trajectories of a majority of mathematicians follow what I call the "age–genius curve," where their productivity, measured both by the quality and quantity of their publications, peaks very early in their careers and gradually declines thereafter, there is a small minority of mathematicians who produce a large quantity of high-quality work throughout their careers. This dichotomy of mathematicians is reminiscent of Moffitts (1993) taxonomy of "adolescence-limiteds" and "life-course persistents" among criminals.
More seriously, Dean Simonton at UC Davis has done some work claiming that there is a slow age-related decline in quality and quantity of creative output, but the relevant variable is career age, not biological age. He also makes it clear that although he believes there is a clear aggregate trend, the individual variability is much greater than the aggregate variability. Furthermore, he attributes the decline mostly to factors other than biological aging.
Simonton, D. K. (1997). Creative productivity: A predictive and explanatory model of career trajectories and landmarks. Psychological Review, 104, 66-89.
This paper is behind a subscription paywall (but there is a link below in the comments), so instead I'm posting this link to the PowerPoint (sorry) of his 2005 talk at the Max Planck International Research Network on Aging:
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/Simonton/MxAgCrProd.ppt
I couldn't find a good sound bite from Simonton's paper. Here is a quote from Arne Dietrich's 2004 paper The cognitive neuroscience of creativity:
Simonton (1997) has convincingly demonstrated that “creative productivity is a function of career age, not chronological age” (p. 70). Although career age and chronological age are highly correlated, latecomers to a discipline show the same career trajectories and landmarks, as well as conformity to the 10-year rule (Simonton, 1997, 2003). For instance, mathematicians peak on average at 26.5 years of career age, while historians peak at 38.5 (Simonton, 1997). Because prefrontal-dependent mental functions do not significantly decline until old age, the distinction between chronological and career age can be accommodated as long as the creator’s career onset is not at an advanced chronological age.