> What do you mean? Einstein was well funded for decades, and his famous work wasn't funded at all.
That's exactly what is being pointed out.
His famous work wasn't funded, so perhaps funding at that point would have resulted in even more work at that level of insight and impact, or perhaps the we would have had the special and general theories of relativity sooner.
Conversely, by the time he was famous and therefore well-funded, he was no longer producing work at that level.
So, the idea is that funding doesn't go where and when it would do the most good.
Personally I think generalizing from one famous person's track record isn't such a great idea, but there is certainly data that suggests that committees aren't particularly good at choosing which grant proposals to fund[0][1][2], and that it would be a good idea to choose at least some proposals randomly[3] (as long as they meet a minimal threshold of quality/sanity), if only to shift the incentives away from trying to game the system.
I think there is another angle to it. After a major result, is the purpose to continue finding major results or broadcast, proselytize, and teach.
One of the crazy things that I have found as a senior engineer, I focus much more on growing people in the space I created. Afterall, if the space I create can't be occupied by people, then I failed.
For Einstein, how much of his time was dedicated towards the education of ideas versus trying to solve new problems. I don't know, but it is worth considering what the purpose of tenure. Is the idea of tenure to encourage people to find new results, or to continue teaching their ideas?
I understood tenure to more or less mean "We've found your contributions valuable enough to date that we are now ensuring that you can never be fired for having the 'wrong' opinions, thus guaranteeing your academic freedom."
Whether that academic freedom is intended to enable teaching or further research probably varies by institution and subject/department, and maybe individually as well.
