This is often the case but I would never expect a response. I used to work with some PhD CS / MD / IITians / TED speakers. By-and-large, top people tend to skew

This is often the case but I would never expect a response. I used to work with some PhD CS / MD / IITians / TED speakers. By-and-large, top people tend to skew towards celebrity-like personalities: bifurcating into highly-socialized or misanthropic. Most are highly-socialized as it's academia. My general rule-set is "impose as least as possible, ask something only they would know, and don't waste anyone's time."