"He was an ardent pragmatist who cared more about achieving compelling results than demonstrating theoretical 'interestingness'..."
Are those people actually rare in academia?
Are those people actually rare in academia?
What I meant was that in the context of a highly competitive research environment those who were succesful had learned that to succeed they couldn't afford to focus on anything that wouldn't progress their own careers - and that meant (and presumably still means) publications in the rights places which are usually completely uninterested in practical details and focused more on pure mathematical/conceptual concepts.
I'm not a systems researcher but I work in a systems research group (at MSRA) as a PL researcher, which is a very different community; we tend to be more designy.
It's not that they don't look for things with practical results. It's just that there's no incentive to continue beyond the point where you demonstrate the contribution.