I agree with your sentiment. I think the high reward would be breaking ground in a field or doing something prize-worthy or money-worthy (turning your research

I agree with your sentiment. I think the high reward would be breaking ground in a field or doing something prize-worthy or money-worthy (turning your research into a company or something). I think the incentives are very misaligned against the hard sciences. This is coming from someone who loved physics in high school and materials science in college, but switched to computer science for economic reasons (I do really enjoy programming, but my first love was for other sciences).