I'm from /g/ and know nothing about math or most science but it's mostly just Google, decades honing the ability to Google quickly and identify useful results in a second or two, and reading everything helpful I can find about it over and over until it finally lodges into my retarded skull
Motivation and willpower definitely helps a lot. I've been through it enough to know that no matter how arcane and completely incomprehensible something is to me at first glance, I can eventually grasp it, even if it may take me weeks of painstakingly re-reading it and playing with it dozens or hundreds of times
