Even more broadly, when was the last big idea in academia? Yes, they've mapped the human genome and all that, but that's just grunt work, not a big idea that l

Even more broadly, when was the last big idea in academia? Yes, they've mapped the human genome and all that, but that's just grunt work, not a big idea that lead to new fruitful research. I don't know a lot about the different disciplines, but it seems like math is running out of steam, so I've heard from a PhD student who switched to CS.