Maybe it’s to do with luck. As in, smart people will encounter problems and work on them and solve them, and the smartest ones will solve them faster and solve

Maybe it’s to do with luck. As in, smart people will encounter problems and work on them and solve them, and the smartest ones will solve them faster and solve more problems, but the search space of problems is vast and only in retrospect do we know which ones were of crucial importance. Therefore the Einstein is more likely to be not-the-smartest, and the smartest is unlikely to be the Einstein (though more likely than any other individual). A way to test this would be to check how many of the most important breakthroughs were things that were considered vital in advance and had everyone trying to solve them. Like will the next Einstein be the person who solves fusion, or something else entirely? Another dimension is practical experimentation. Were the Wright brothers geniuses? I think it’s more that the hands-on approach yields much faster innovation than the dry theorising.