If you are thinking of Perelman and the Poincare conjecture then I don't think his career really maps to the kind of "outsider" that is described in this thread

If you are thinking of Perelman and the Poincare conjecture then I don't think his career really maps to the kind of "outsider" that is described in this thread: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#Early_life_and_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#Early_life_... He had a PhD in math with enough success to be offered faculty positions at Princeton and Stanford. The fact that he recluded from academic life after that doesn't matter.