[vishaalk]

Your analysis might be sound, but I think your physicist example is off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries#2...

Ctrl+F Albert Einstein.

Many things in history are discovered very close to one another--suggesting that maybe 100 or so average physicists (not sure what this means though, most people who get to that level are extremely intelligent), would probably work out what Einstein did. People have suggested discovery is "inevitable".

"But if you take that guy out of the team, then the other 9 could expend infinite resources and would never get anywhere." This leads me to believe the physicist example is off here.

[_gok2]

I think, in Physics, the key is not the discoveries, but the understanding.

It's often a single change in perception that unlocks a raft of related discoveries. Which also makes reasoning about such things hard, because once that perception shift has been identified, previously hard-to-understand things become easy, making the initial discovery look trivial.

That change in perception can happen from a small group of people or from a single person.