I'm not sure I'd describe GR and the foundations of QM as 'low hanging fruit.'
Einstein seems smarter because he was smarter. He didn't transform one small area of physics, he solved a lot of problems that were out at the edges and introduced new ideas that made them tractable.
Of course other people helped, and some of those other people might have created GR eventually.
But he was the only one to pull it all together.
In physics now there are plenty of people with world-class math talent, but no one with Einstein's intuition, insight, and creativity.
Which is why I think progress on the really hard problems has become glacial. Those problems always need deep creative insight, and math alone isn't enough.
> In physics now there are plenty of people with world-class math talent, but no one with Einstein's intuition, insight, and creativity.
I think because physics is now an industry in which deep creative insight is pretty worthless. For example, someone who could convince the gov't to award a $10 million grant to seek physical evidence of dark energy is likely going to have more success than a theorist who can show that dark energy is superfluous.
In Einstein's time physics was more like a hobby. An Einstein today, if they started as a patent clerk they'd more likely progress to IT than physics. At least in IT their creativity can be employed.
Einstein seems smarter because he was smarter. He didn't transform one small area of physics, he solved a lot of problems that were out at the edges and introduced new ideas that made them tractable.
Of course other people helped, and some of those other people might have created GR eventually.
But he was the only one to pull it all together.
In physics now there are plenty of people with world-class math talent, but no one with Einstein's intuition, insight, and creativity.
Which is why I think progress on the really hard problems has become glacial. Those problems always need deep creative insight, and math alone isn't enough.