Do we know whether there are many Ramanujans who gave up before getting through to someone? One way to tell might be to look at such people who had already given up and were then discovered through a coincidence.
It would be nice to have additional data. However, I think we can mine the case of Ramanujan for clues about difficulty of entry. What I find striking is that he only contacted three mathematicians. Had he contacted, say, twenty before being noticed, that would have suggested a higher barrier to entry. But it was apparently just three. My own experience is that the great scientific minds are very approachable, aside from a tiny handful of scientist celebrities who understandably have to learn to be less approachable.
Do we know whether there are many Ramanujans who gave up before getting through to someone? One way to tell might be to look at such people who had already given up and were then discovered through a coincidence.
It would be nice to have additional data. However, I think we can mine the case of Ramanujan for clues about difficulty of entry. What I find striking is that he only contacted three mathematicians. Had he contacted, say, twenty before being noticed, that would have suggested a higher barrier to entry. But it was apparently just three. My own experience is that the great scientific minds are very approachable, aside from a tiny handful of scientist celebrities who understandably have to learn to be less approachable.