I believe it’s true, yet some of the best work of man was done largely alone. Einstein had his miracle year not at a university but by himself at the patent agency in which he worked and at home in his apartment in Bern. He was all but isolated from peers with very little face-to-face time with anyone who understood just a little about advanced physics. In our time, he could have been working from home somewhere in a small town, couldn’t he?
He actually had a little club of three people, who discussed physics. However, I'm not sure of the time line, I think it was before his miracle year.
Explaining an idea to someone (rubber ducking) can help a lot. It may be that he had the hint of the ideas before, and spent a year working out the details, and writing them up.
Everybody likes to pick these miraculous examples. Sure, Einstein worked alone. Did the people who expanded and industrialized his theories also worked alone?
I’d say solo genius, lone wolf kind of work is the minority of work. And it’s probably not enough to keep employed huge masses of people.
