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by nottorp 409 days ago
Related: Historically, most "universal men" that greatly advanced science before the last 1-2 centuries were independently wealthy.
1 comments

This also depends heavily on the field, some sciences need particle accelerators and mass spectrometers, meanwhile we can get by on a $200 pc and free wifi. This means you can bypass a lot of traditional university/lab structures.
The point is not that they could afford expensive tools.

The point is that they did their research sort of "for fun".