[ojbyrne]

Except the history of academia and science is rife with people who slaved away for their entire life in their narrow field of specialty, before discovering something that changed the world, and their life. There's no objective test to determine the difference between "failure to pivot" and "changing the world with a little more effort."

The guy who developed a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem worked on it for seven years. I suspect people laughed at him, told him he would never succeed, told him he should do other things.

After he came up with the solution, he was knighted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiles%27_proof_of_Fermat%27s_La...

[billswift]

There is a big difference between working on something for a long time and, basically, just keeping hoping for a long time. I wonder how many people who have their PhDs and hope for an academic job are really working at improving their abilities in their fields, or even at keeping up.

[jbapple]

> I suspect people laughed at him, told him he would never succeed, told him he should do other things.

I don't think that's true. IIRC, Wiles was pretty successful before he started the work (tenure at Princeton?), worked on it secretly, and still published (though at a lower rate) to cover his secret.

[nkassis]

Here's a documentary about him, it's worth watching: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8269328330690408516#

[roadnottaken]

"If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice if you're doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of graduate school."

--Paul Graham from http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

[cdavid]

That's pretty rare situation nowadays, and relatively specific to maths and few other fields where you can work by yourself. Even Nobel-prize level research is rarely done this way anymore.

[neutronicus]

Somewhat off-topic, but I've had fleeting contact with a former doctoral student of Wiles', Brian Conrad (math professor at Stanford now), and holy fuck is that guy intelligent.