[T]he ideal scientist is smart only to an intermediate degree: bright enough to see what can be done but not so bright as to become bored doing it. This remind

[T]he ideal scientist is smart only to an intermediate degree: bright enough to see what can be done but not so bright as to become bored doing it. This reminds me of a piece I once read on Freeman Dyson — can't find it now, sorry — which had a couple of interesting nuggets. As I recall, Dyson was once at lunch with a couple of Nobel laureates, when someone mentioned a puzzle they had heard, some question in number theory. Everyone at the table was stumped except Dyson; and once he gave the answer they were baffled as to how he had come up with it so quickly. On the other hand, he was asked, as I guess he occasionally is, why he had not won a Nobel. His answer was something like, "To do that you have to work on the same problem for a decade. I don't have that kind of attention span." So it seems like Wilson may have a point here.