Where Have All the Scientific Heroes Gone?

Science continues to produce remarkable discoveries, yet fewer scientists capture the imagination of an entire generation. What changed: the scientists themselves, or the way we celebrate and remember them?

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Ask any researcher from the 1950s or 60s who inspired them. The answer would be Max Delbrück, Francis Crick, James Watson, Sydney Brenner, Barbara McClintock, or Richard Feynman. These, or any other names from that era, would come effortlessly. They are not just famous scientists. They shaped how people thought about science itself. A molecular biologist did not just want to publish a paper, he wanted to think like Max Delbrück. A physicist wanted to ask impossible questions like Richard Feynman. Some wanted to reinvent biology the way Sydney Brenner did. These were scientists whose ideas reshaped how an entire generation thought about science.

Now, ask a room full of graduate students the same question: Who is your scientific hero? The silence is often longer than expected.

Has this generation stopped producing scientific heroes, or have we stopped recognizing them?

In the past, the work of a single laboratory could change an entire field. Pick any major discovery from that era and you will usually find only one or two names behind it. Discoveries were also slower, allowing the personalities of the scientists to emerge alongside the discoveries. People not only remembered the work but also associated it with the individuals who carried it out. In contrast, papers now have hundreds of authors, and major discoveries involve large international consortia. AI will soon become the new norm. In the midst of all these developments, our heroes have become diluted. The achievements look more like collaborative efforts than individual breakthroughs.

When I say DNA double helix, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Immediately, a black and white photograph appears, with a DNA double helix model at the centre and Watson and Crick standing on either side. Now think about the Human Genome Project. Did you get any image? Both are equally important, but one has recognizable faces while the other is remembered as a massive collaborative effort.

Another important difference was that previous generations had limited access to scientists. You only heard about them after they made an important discovery. No one knew who Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl were, but their single experiment in 1957 made them household names. Lecture series used to be the main events on the academic calendar. You learned about discoveries and the journeys of scientists through biographies and books. Instead, we now hear from them on Twitter, X, podcasts, and interviews. We see scientists arguing over grant rejections, citations, peer review, and politics. There is nothing wrong with any of this, but it makes heroes appear more human. This is not limited to scientists alone. Even Hollywood and Bollywood stars have lost some of their mystique, thanks to social media.

Another striking feature of earlier generations was that they belonged to distinct intellectual schools of thought. James Watson can easily be recognized as a prodigy of Max Delbrück. Niels Bohr inspired generations of quantum physicists. Erwin Schrödinger inspired countless molecular biologists through his book What Is Life? Sydney Brenner built an intellectual community around worm genetics. Students did not necessarily have direct contact with or work under their heroes. James Watson never worked with Max Delbrück, nor did he publish a paper with him. They inherited ideas and philosophies through their mentors. Increasingly, career progression matters more than ideas and ways of thinking.

Slowly but surely, we have stopped producing legends and replaced them with metrics. Young scientists today are familiar with H index, impact factors, citation counts, and grant scores. We appreciate numbers more than the stories behind the discoveries. The previous generation remembered, "What a beautiful question Delbrück asked." Our generation remembers, "This PI published in XYZ journal." Science often feels less inspirational and more transactional. Increasingly, students choose a PhD mentor not because he or she has a great idea, but because he or she has a large grant or has just published a major paper. More importantly, he or she is visible in academic circles and active on social media.

India, too, once had C. V. Raman, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Homi J. Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, G. N. Ramachandran, M. S. Swaminathan, and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Yet many scientists in India do not enjoy the public stature that leading scientists in some Western countries have. Public attention is overwhelmingly concentrated on politicians, film stars, and cricketers. Scientific achievements rarely receive comparable media coverage. When was the last time you saw a major scientific breakthrough on the front page of an Indian newspaper? Many of India's greatest scientific successes, such as space missions, nuclear programmes, and vaccine development, are collective efforts. In such cases, the public remembers organizations like ISRO more than the individual scientists behind them.

Many scientists who transformed Indian science are not widely known outside academic circles because their stories were never told effectively. Many Indians know little about the personal struggles and intellectual achievements of the scientists who built India's research ecosystem. This could also be because scientists are rarely trained or encouraged to become public communicators. Few spend time writing popular science books, engaging on social media, or becoming public intellectuals. This is in contrast to the West, which had figures like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman, whose influence extended far beyond their scientific work.

To be fair, post independence India inherited institutions, not intellectual schools of thought. The country's scientific effort focused heavily on nation building, training manpower, and developing technology. Scientists such as Homi J. Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai were extraordinary institution builders, and much of their effort was directed towards achieving strategic national goals.

Many great scientists are remembered not simply because of their discoveries but because they created intellectual movements. A scientist becomes a hero when people can say, "This field would look fundamentally different without them." Delbrück helped create molecular biology at Caltech. Bohr built modern quantum mechanics in Copenhagen. Brenner shaped modern genetics and developmental biology in Cambridge. The world has produced many excellent scientists in recent years, but relatively few have occupied that central position in shaping an entire discipline.

Many scientific heroes were also rebels. Delbrück abandoned physics to study biology when most physicists thought biology was messy and dominated by vitalistic thinking. Brenner was famous for questioning everyone, and he championed the use of simple model organisms to answer fundamental biological questions. Feynman ignored convention and rebuilt key parts of quantum electrodynamics. In contrast, current academia can be highly hierarchical. Young scientists are often encouraged to fit into existing structures rather than challenge them. Such environments rarely produce larger than life scientific personalities.

Most contemporary scientists write technical papers, not intellectual memoirs. We know little about how they thought, argued, failed, or made discoveries. Without stories, it is difficult to create heroes. Watson's The Double Helix made an entire generation feel as though they knew Crick and the corridors of Cambridge University.

Where are the equivalent stories today?

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