I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “most scientific progress,” and I’m missing some of the history here, but my sense is that importance-weighted science happens proportionally more outside of academia. E.g., Einstein did his miracle year outside of academia (and later stated that he wouldn’t have been able to do it, had he succeeded at getting an academic position), Darwin figured out natural selection, and Carnot figured out the Carnot cycle, all mostly on their own, outside of academia. Those are three major scientists who arguably started entire fields (quantum mechanics, biology, and thermodynamics). I would anti-predict that future scientific progress, of the field-founding sort, comes primarily from people at prestigious universities, since they, imo, typically have some of the most intense gatekeeping dynamics which make it harder to have original thoughts.
I do wonder to what degree that may be biased by the fact that there were vastly less academic positions before WWI/WWII. In the time of Darwin and Carnot these positions virtually didn’t exist. In the time of Einstein they did exist but they were quite rare still.
How many examples do you know of this happening past WWII?
Shannon was at Bell Labs iirc
As counterexample of field-founding happening in academia: Godel, Church, Turing were all in academia.
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “most scientific progress,” and I’m missing some of the history here, but my sense is that importance-weighted science happens proportionally more outside of academia. E.g., Einstein did his miracle year outside of academia (and later stated that he wouldn’t have been able to do it, had he succeeded at getting an academic position), Darwin figured out natural selection, and Carnot figured out the Carnot cycle, all mostly on their own, outside of academia. Those are three major scientists who arguably started entire fields (quantum mechanics, biology, and thermodynamics). I would anti-predict that future scientific progress, of the field-founding sort, comes primarily from people at prestigious universities, since they, imo, typically have some of the most intense gatekeeping dynamics which make it harder to have original thoughts.
Good point.
I do wonder to what degree that may be biased by the fact that there were vastly less academic positions before WWI/WWII. In the time of Darwin and Carnot these positions virtually didn’t exist. In the time of Einstein they did exist but they were quite rare still.
How many examples do you know of this happening past WWII?
Shannon was at Bell Labs iirc
As counterexample of field-founding happening in academia: Godel, Church, Turing were all in academia.