alt Hacker News>> For example that list in the case of quantum mechanics was Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Erwin Schrödinger.
Those were not the only people working in that field at the time. Not by a long shot. In order to have pioneers in a field, there has to BE a field with a bunch of people in it.
You're right that these were not the only people working on the set of problems that lead to QM. Lots of people were thinking about the same problems at the same period of time. And lots more added to it later.
But what key concept underlying how we now think about QM doesn't go back to this list of people? OK, add Richard Feynman if you want to include the second breakthrough to QED.
Ideas that look like conceptual breakthroughs can usually be traced back to small numbers of people. Ideas that look like progress usually trace back to much larger groups.