[jon_black]

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I wrote about this myself a while ago: https://www.jonblack.me/perfection_and_procrastination/

I'm also reading a book at the moment about the history of prime numbers. Both Gauss and Reimann were such perfectionists that they didn't publish (not archive) proofs they claimed to have. There is evidence they knew much more than they let on because it wasn't up to their high standards.

[Nomentatus]

Or, IMHO, evidence that both liked to "hide the ladder" - deliberately not publish result A although they were sure of it and thought it important; but instead use that to obtain results F, G and H which they would then publish, to much greater acclaim: since no-one could see how they could possibly have come up with these advanced ideas in the first place. (How to look like a genius.) This works as long as F, G and H don't obviously imply A (but that's very often the case, in fact, the usual case.)

This is a vicious practice because once a discovery is skipped over it can be devilishly hard to discover later on, it's too easy to overlook, since no fresh result people are eager to work with ever points toward it. I think a occult Gauss discovery still inhibits our understanding of quantum mechanics, for example, to this day. I don't offer to support this paragraph at this time, however.