[alpineidyll3]

If today's scientific community were as functional as Rudy Marcus' we'd still be progressing. The key moment of his career was prediction of an inverted trend in an unexplored experimental regime. In today's academia, he would have hopped to a startup rather than struggle for tenure with foreign ideas that don't support anyone else's old stack of fluffy papers.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

Progress is brought forward by people who are 'out there' and are 'out there' enough to let the whole world to know that they are.

But you cannot confine it to science and academia, rather it's the general background 'out there-ness' of the whole planet which then finds its way in various sectors.

In other words you don't get the Einsteins without the Hitlers and you don't get the Richard Feynmans without the Charlie Mansons