>>11532164who rebranded ideas from applied math in esoteric sounding philosophical terms and then hoodwinked everyone into thinking he was a misunderstood and persecuted genius so him or his ideas could never be properly scrutinized for fear of being perceived as an "asshole" because "look at that poor guy don't criticize him?"
Gee I dunno if there really is an equivalent to that in physics. "grothendieck" (shapiro) really takes the cake. Although when I think about it- the whole orthodox jew taking on a christian identity (his mother's name) and then "inventing" an entire theory or "new" way of "looking at things" that people worship and defend like a cult sounds oddly familiar...
Or maybe there is someone who is as hypocritical and contradictory as shapiro? He is famous for being quoted on literally defining the solution to an equation by the literal definition of the word as if this is somehow deep, but even worse in my opinion he is also often quoted for "creating a space in which we can DO math in" and somehow being a "hero" for constructive mathematics, despite literally only doing theory his whole life and being completely disconnected from numbers, which are the blood and flesh of math. See also: grothendieck primes.
Maybe one of his brilliant and misunderstood students can find a functor between the space of con-artists in math and the space of con-artists in physics. Maybe someone who created a physical theory that has a cult like following despite the fact that it can't be tested? Sounds similar.
