Also the way people received information was different. The development of the information age. Newsreels. Learning how to appeal to a lot of people with new media.

I try to imagine how Einstein got famous. Even now hardly anybody, relatively speaking, understands that stuff. A good story, I guess: a lowly patent clerk changes our conception of space and time. Also entwined in the war - opposition to Germany, pro Zionism, the bomb - patriotism and propaganda. Our hero.

Feynman has a story that sells. Plays bongo drums, picks locks in a top-secret environment. Excellent at explaining things.

Nowadays, who invented CRISPR? They were Chinese. Is that a good story to tell? Maybe not to a western audience. Fusion, worked on by many many people, might be solved by AI. Will the AI become famous? Maybe the giants now are corporations: Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft.