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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Tangential: If anyone ever struggles to put theory to practice, this is a great example of the "Great Man Theory" promulgating itself.

It checks all of the boxes for the "Radical outlier who changes everything by dint of genius and hard work" while barely acknowledging the circumstances, environment, timing etc...

Gifted from birth

Non-traditional and "Troubled" socially

Ahead of peers and mentors

Focused and Driven

Overcame institutional/structural resistance

This is not meant to detract from Oppenheimer's immense contributions, to the contrary. I thought it was something worth keeping in mind as I read the article - especially considering that Oppenheimer himself would spread credit to others and attempt to dismiss the idea that the Manhattan Project was a "One man show."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

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>dent of genius

Sorry, the pedant in me (well, me) must point out it's "dint."

Thanks for the edit!

That great discoveries are so often made independently by multiple people when their time has come suggests that if the theory is right, Great Men are a dime a dozen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery

I often wonder if the same applies to business. Maybe Jobs, Gates or Bezos didn't make such an outsized contribution but maybe they were able to concentrate on themselves what other people would have done too. Maybe just a little later or differently.

Makes me wonder about Einstein. Were other people working on relativity too?

Plenty of people were working on the issues that relativity sought to resolve but I've never heard of any simultaneous discovery of relativity. Many of the other stuff Einstein worked on had multiple "discoveries", I remember reading some about Brownian motion before.

Absolutely yes on the Einstein question. Check out Bohr, Lorentz and Poincare to start.

And Hilbert actually beat him to the final equation.

Actually, he didn’t. I looked into it about six months ago. Einstein clearly got there first.

Essay: https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-ra...

Gates and Bezos absolutely dispensable. Both just very aggressive opportunists. Gates actually suffocated innovation, not fostered it.

The only one of the three you name where you could make a case for them making a real difference would be Jobs (and I say that even though I am a non-fan).

There was a task that needed to be accomplished and nobody cared about who or how, just that it get done. Such was the nature of the times. Many men like Oppenheimer rose to greatness as a result. This pattern seems to repeat itself whenever a society finds itself under existential threat. When society needs great men great men rise to the occasion.

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