Hacker News Reader

[[citation needed]]

What has been an amateur science breakthrough in the last century or two which didn't have at it's base some billions of dollars of government funding.

View on HN

The Special Theory of Relativity, from some moonlighting patent clerk.

That was over a century ago (although within the “century or two” limit specified). But it’s not at all characteristic of the majority of scientific discoveries made in the last century, which were largely made by professional scientists and grad students on their way to becoming professionals. The list of Nobel Prizes in various sciences over the past century I think demonstrates this.

Maybe government money has squeezed out innovation a la Einstein.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com