In order to innovate, one usually needs to get familiar historical progress. While Einstein had to master mechanics, electrodynamics and thermodynamics in order to build his own theories, a Physicist working in today's day and age has to also master the explosive progress made in the last 100 years. The only way to mitigate this problem seems to be (at least in scientific fields and a bit in computer science too) is specialization, which is not always a good thing.