Nah. The reality is that very very few people will "make great discoveries and contributions" even for graduate students in those fields or after getting a PhD

Nah. The reality is that very very few people will "make great discoveries and contributions" even for graduate students in those fields or after getting a PhD degree, and many people who are good enough to become professors do mostly mediocre research or publish papers that have very little impact. For this LK-99 thing, I doubt more than 5 people of all those that are interested will be making any significant contributions in 10 to 20 years.