[jfoutz]

Well, Euler, and maybe Ramanujan.

I'm not them. It's better to assume we all need help and direction. Just about everyone I've ever worked with has had a beautiful insight or three. The real trick seems to be finding a process that produces good enough results that isn't so soul-crushing that it extinguishes those rare brilliant insights.

[peterburkimsher]

Even Isaac Newton had the humility to thank others for their help. "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g...

Academic citations work the same way: saying thank you to the people who helped builds their reputation, and is a positive-feedback cycle of growth and joy. Thank you jfoutz for humbly saying that you also need help and direction; me too.

[philipswood]

You need to add Gauss, who basically figured out arithmetic on his own the way he tells it, but you probably need to remove Ramanujan. Yes, he was brilliant and self-taught with the proper material as inspiration, but where he ended up wasn't understandable to other mathematicians and neither where they to him.