>One can only imagine what he could have done with a modern computer.

The historical anecdote my thesis advisor was telling about origins of his (i mean founded by him) branch of the science was along the lines "Americans had computers and could get good numerical solutions, while we didn't have computers and thus were forced to work on analytical solution". Well, that analytical solution he produced happened to be a great insight into the problem space and still continues to be the key tool for the research in that area almost 60 years later.