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No, the most significant advances in science were done on a shoestring budget (or no budget at all) - just by THINKING. It doesn't require lots of money to support people who do that kind of work, and they are easy to find, especially in theoretical physics and mathematics.

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Maybe it was true a hundred years ago, but it is not true today, unfortunately. Science became much more complicated.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190468

It is still true. Before the tau neutrino was confirmed in a lab, it had been theoretized 25 or so years before that, which required nothing but pencil and paper. Modern quantum field theory doesn't require expensive gear. Math doesn't require any gear at all, and there is a whole pile of crucially important unsolved problems.

The fact that science became complicated is a sign of thought stagnation, not a sign of progress.

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