This post looks - for inspiration - at some cases in science where an individual picked a problem (which had been set aside by the community, because it believed the problem to be too difficult to solve), and achieved a breakthrough by solving it.
In each case, the scientific community responded variously: with ridicule when it learnt that someone was trying to take on the problem, with unwillingness to accept the solution even when it had been established, with puzzlement when the details of the solution were not revealed initially, with complaints that the individual should have shared out their partial progress instead of surprising the world with the final answer.
Before I present the list, in no order of time or importance, the famous quote on the topic:
"Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back."
Nakamura. Shuji Nakamura invented the blue LED for which he received the 2014 Nobel prize in physics. This device is crucial to LED lighting. I heard Nakamura talk live during a visit to the GlobalFoundries campus north of Albany some years ago.
At the time of his invention, it was not believed that GaN (Gallium Nitride) could be used to make such an LED marketably. Nakamura recounted how he would give talks on his project to mostly empty sessions at conferences. Once he overheard two professors saying 'some crazy guy is giving a talk about blue LEDs' ; later both of them ended up working for him.
Nakamura accomplished his aim by basically moving in with his MOCVD (Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition) machine, which made the LEDs, for a year or so. He said his family hated him for doing that, but he knew he was on to something very important. He later successfully sued his then employer Nichia for hundreds of millions of dollars for the invention proceeds. He is now a professor at UC Santa Barbara.
Lars Onsager: Onsager (Nobel prize in Chemistry 1968) famously exactly solved the two-dimensional Ising model, which was the first model to analytically show a phase transition (these transitions are said to occur when water changes to ice or steam, for example). Before that it was not clear that the subject of statistical mechanics could handle phase transitions.
Before Onsager, physicists like Lenz, Bethe and Peierls found approximate results but no one came even close to solving it exactly. Onsager was notoriously cryptic, and just wrote the answer down on the blackboard at a conference. C. N. Yang (Nobel Prize in Physics 1957) later worked out the details, calling it the longest calculation he had ever done.
Dan Schechtman. Schechtman (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011) discovered something called the icosahedral phase, which opened up the field of quasi(periodic)crystals, which are ordered but not periodic.
When Schechtman initially showed his data, no one believed him since his results contradicted the standard textbooks which said all crystals are periodic. He was fired from his research team. He encountered special resistance and ridicule from Linus Pauling (Nobel Prizes in Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962), who famously said "There are no quasicrystals, only quasiscientists."
Pauling passed away by the time Schechtman was proven right. Schechtman said after a point he enjoyed every moment of the dispute with Pauling, knowing that Pauling was wrong.
Andrew Wiles. Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, one of the longstanding challenges (>350 years) in mathematics, after 7 years of working in secret and simultaneously maintaining a funded research program in another topic.
After Wiles initially presented his proof, it was found to contain a gap. Wiles tried for a year to fix it without success. He was about to give up when he got a revelation and found the solution.
Even great mathematicians like David Hilbert had given up on the problem as a lost cause; Wiles' words about proving the theorem being like finding your way in a dark house are haunting.
Grigori Perlman. Perlman proved the Poincare conjecture, a result of great importance in topology, and a prominent problem that had been unsolved for a century. Perlman also proved the famous Thurston conjecture (made by the topologist William Thurston, brother of my departmental colleague George).
Perlman wanted no part of the ensuing media hype. He gave up his research position at the Steklov Institute, and refused the Fields Medal (the equivalent of the Nobel prize in mathematics) as well as the $1Million Clay Millennium Prize. He has apparently subsequently withdrawn from active mathematical research.
Conclusion
Get that garage side-project going!
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