As I stated in the grandparent, the relevant distinction is whether or not you are paid to do the research, or whether you are forced to do it in your “spare time”.
But what about some of the other spectacular inventions of the last fifty years: the laser, the transistor, the fiber-optic cable, the communications satellite? Didn’t those come from the private sector? As it happens, they came from Bell Labs, which is interesting as the sort of mammoth exception that proves the rule. Because of AT&T’s government-sanctioned monopoly, for much of the 20th century Bell Labs was able to function like the world’s largest university, devoting billions of dollars to “irrelevant” research.
Thus, the people you mention were, I assume, doing their actual jobs when they invented the transistor, which makes them analogous to academics, and not analogous to Einstein in the patent office.
The modern analogue of Einstein would be someone dropping out of grad school, becoming a software developer (or something), and within a few years posting groundbreaking papers on the arXiv that they wrote for the fun of it. You can call such a person an “insider” if you like because of their (unfinished) education, but I guarantee you they sure as hell won’t feel like one in the years before their paper comes out. (They won’t have library privileges, won’t get invited to physicist parties, and generally won’t be taken seriously because...they’re not a physicist, they’re a software developer.)
I think the “jump through the usual hoops” description shminux is using is a more useful one than the “outsider” description you’re using.
As I stated in the grandparent, the relevant distinction is whether or not you are paid to do the research, or whether you are forced to do it in your “spare time”.
I apologize, it appears I didn’t read the post in question carefully enough; the criterion of if you’re paid to research is a useful one.
But although Einstein is salient, I can’t think of too many other examples. The two that leap to mind are Green (working in the early 1800s) and Lavoisier (working in the late 1700s), but from that I would expect “household name scientist who was an outsider” to be something that shows up once or twice a century. (I’m counting Lavoisier because he was funded by his tax farming, but he was definitely part of the ‘establishment’ of the day.)
(And you do see contemporary outsider contributions if you know where to look, like Gary Cola or Jack Andraka, but not at the household name level- probably because there aren’t that many household name scientists!)
As I stated in the grandparent, the relevant distinction is whether or not you are paid to do the research, or whether you are forced to do it in your “spare time”.
On Bell Labs specifically, see Scott Aaronson:
Thus, the people you mention were, I assume, doing their actual jobs when they invented the transistor, which makes them analogous to academics, and not analogous to Einstein in the patent office.
The modern analogue of Einstein would be someone dropping out of grad school, becoming a software developer (or something), and within a few years posting groundbreaking papers on the arXiv that they wrote for the fun of it. You can call such a person an “insider” if you like because of their (unfinished) education, but I guarantee you they sure as hell won’t feel like one in the years before their paper comes out. (They won’t have library privileges, won’t get invited to physicist parties, and generally won’t be taken seriously because...they’re not a physicist, they’re a software developer.)
More useful for what, exactly?
I apologize, it appears I didn’t read the post in question carefully enough; the criterion of if you’re paid to research is a useful one.
But although Einstein is salient, I can’t think of too many other examples. The two that leap to mind are Green (working in the early 1800s) and Lavoisier (working in the late 1700s), but from that I would expect “household name scientist who was an outsider” to be something that shows up once or twice a century. (I’m counting Lavoisier because he was funded by his tax farming, but he was definitely part of the ‘establishment’ of the day.)
(And you do see contemporary outsider contributions if you know where to look, like Gary Cola or Jack Andraka, but not at the household name level- probably because there aren’t that many household name scientists!)