> he could extract the essential information from the much more confuse sources that were available at his time Wasn't this the case with Einstein's relativity

> he could extract the essential information from the much more confuse sources that were available at his time Wasn't this the case with Einstein's relativity as well? From what I understand the maths for it was already developed for many years, but Einstein was the first to tie it all together into a cohesive theory. Ideas like there being no absolute time, speed of light being constant in all frames, seem like a pretty big conceptual leap. I don't know how scientists at the time reacted to it, but defying Newtonian laws at a time when it was considered absolutely sacrosanct, must have been a big deal. We see the same with general relativity, with ideas like saying gravity and acceleration is the same thing. I think what really impresses people is the radical nature of these ideas, which completely upheaval long-standing, prevailing notions. To do something like that once would be pretty remarkable by itself. But to do it twice, and in both cases, resulting in a new framework that will become the basis for nearly everything else, surely must put them in the conversation for the greatest at the very least.