list famous-ish burnouts, their accomplishments, and your theories on why they burned out
>H. D. Politzer
won Nobel prize in physics for discovery of asymptotic freedom. got tenure at caltech. probably burned out because his advisor David Gross had him work on disproving asymptotic freedom and he ended up proving it by reproducing something ‘t Hooft already knew and showed people but never published.

>Ryan Rohm
another one of David Gross’s students—helped discover heterotic string theory. eventually got a faculty position at NC State i think but was burned out already because the string masters were beyond him and he got into computer science instead i guess

>Leon Cooper
Nobel for helping discover the theory of superconductivity. tenured faculty at Brown. burned out probably because he got tenure so quickly and went into neuroscience

others?