"Greatness" and "repels people so hard that nobody wants to work with him" are not the same thing. Greatness does not require being that abhorrent to others.

Wild that people think only very specific human beings could have done this, there were multiple people working on the same problems, one of them was going to invent the thing, he wasn't the only genius around.

So much so there were plenty of others coming on his wake, creating and contributing even more to the field.