Maybe, but I somewhat doubt it. Nobel-level work is usually derivative of only a few basic concepts, but is otherwise quite daring. The academic guild system ha

Maybe, but I somewhat doubt it. Nobel-level work is usually derivative of only a few basic concepts, but is otherwise quite daring. The academic guild system has become nearly impossible to get through, and all corporate or government research depends on passing through that system first. Nobody can just get to work. First you have to get in. 99% of applicants are mostly concerned with prestige or career opportunities. 1% wants to do research. Then you need funding. This comes by helping professors on their ideas, not yours. Then you need a job. Better pick a popular field and find ‘business value’. Now it’s time to buy a house. Maybe you’ll get back to that big idea you had once you pay it off. Student loan availability turned the academic pipeline into a job requirement, and a job is then required to pay it off. We’re just entering the era of Nobel winners that started school during the Vietnam boom. It seems to me that the Nobel will cease to have any meaning in a decade or so. The trend is that contemporary prizes are given to politically valued choices from a huge field of contributors, or as an honorarium for ‘famous’ professors. The last 20 years of minted professors are far more focused on job security than great research, and it would be surprising to see a lot of individual breakthroughs at the Nobel level. And then there are corporate labs, which are run by professional managers handing out nebulous quarterly objectives with a side of panic. Forget about it. The biggest hope for ambitious research may be self-funded entrepreneurs. There must be, somewhere along that path to human colonization of space, a Nobel for Elon.