[jerf]

Bear in mind that if someone of Euler's level is operating today, you very likely wouldn't know unless you were in the field, and it might not necessarily be obvious even then.

If you cloned Euler, and magically gave the clone a new upbringing that resulted in the same math skills, Euler!clone wouldn't be becoming famous for proving e^iπ + 1 = 0, because he'd have learned that in high school like the rest of us. Instead, he might go off and do something like Terence Tao and hack away at the Twin Prime conjecture in a series of papers that require a PhD in mathematics just to understand the abstract. It's a lot harder to become famous that way, even if the work being done is much harder in some sense.

I don't want to diminish the genius of pa-h mathematicians, because Euler is still a legitimate genius by any measure, but part of the reason why he could get around the way he did is that he was metaphorically working in a field where he could pluck ripe fruit off the ground. Similar geniuses exist today, but even as geniuses they still need ladders to get to the fruit now, and that just takes more time.

I'm not lamenting this, celebrating it, or judging it... it just is the way it is.

[posterboy]

Cool, I commented to the same effect, but your food-based metaphor brings to mind the notion that we have less lead in the water today, better health care, a handle on air pollution etc. p. p. I am doubting that as I write it, thinking of the hopelessness of CO2 reduction and all the things to come after we have already passed the point of no return.

And I wouldn't want to grow up be a giraf either,if climbing a tree works as well, or just shake it up.

Oh boy, these metaphors are useless.

Let's put it another way. Picking the low hanging fruit has just become either, and it is still necessary to get there. As you mention Terry Tao, to imply at the same time that we had never heard of him is rather disingenious. What is the point?

It has been noted that science, for lack of a better word, is becoming increasingly specialized on the individual level and that we have no polymaths today as it were. Maybe you are still correct insofar as we from in the midst of it cannot yet really tell what combination of skill will take the crown.

But then let's drop a few names, Peter Shor, Noam Chomsky, Frederik Kortlandt. Oh that's right, you never heard of Kortlandt, probably my favorite Indo-Europeanist.