Inadequacy

I'm brushing up on my knowledge of ion channels in order to procrastinate from working on my dissertation. I have just been treated by the author of the book I'm reading to some of the contributions of Arrhenius, Fick, Einstein and Nernst to electrochemistry. He has also, however, made it a point to mention that they were 28, 26, 26 and 24 respectively when they made such major contributions as the dissociation of strong electrolytes, aqueous defusion flux and microscopic random walk of particles. At 27, I have just learned how to graph something in Excel and how to open up a bottle of nitric acid without burning myself. Needless to say, I don't feel as smart as I used to...