>The idea that a lone polymath experimenting in his basement, a la Ben Franklin or James Maxwell, could make a genuinely important scientific discovery, disappe

>The idea that a lone polymath experimenting in his basement, a la Ben Franklin or James Maxwell, could make a genuinely important scientific discovery, disappeared a long time ago. You could have said the same thing in 1900, eight years before the publication of the first paper on general relativity, arguably the most important advance in physics, ever, and something Einstein did independently. Tthe Einsteins and Maxwells of the world don't come along very often, and the fact that we haven't had one in awhile is more a reflection on that rarity than any characteristic of modern science.