Comment by api
Just physics is like this? Hero worship like this is pretty endemic.
It’s weird because on one hand it promotes this disempowering mythology that all progress comes from a vanishingly tiny fraction of humanity, but on the other hand people find it inspiring because if heroes exist then it means people (and maybe you!) can do amazing things. It’s a weird double edged sword.
Fwiw I certainly didn't mean to say this is unique to physics, I'm just not qualified to comment on other fields. Furthermore you make a good point, the hero worship is fruitful. Anecdotally I'd say a full third of my undergrad cohort cited Feynman's auto-hagiography as part of their decision to study physics.
(I also note that any double-edged polyhedral sword is necessarily degenerate.)