But after the Apple Works initial release, Lissner left and refused to work on the code base any more. So Apple asked me to take Apple Works over with the same arrangement Lissner had had, but by then, spoiled by the royalty arrangement and having heard too many stories about Steve's behavior, I refused.
In retrospect, I had no difficulties upgrading Apple Writer and accommodating user suggestions, because I was hundreds of miles away and I wasn't an employee. By the time Apple asked me to take over Apple Works, I understood that fully -- Lissner's circumstances were unbearable -- as a result of which there was no imaginable incentive that could have gotten me into a closer working relationship with Steve.
Trust me, that is nearly a mandatory skill you will need to have to succeed in a place of any significant size.
If you think you can just be successful by working hard you are living in a perennial state of delusion.
That sentiment divides the stories of the well-known and the truly great. Einstein prevailed by working hard, not by stealing the work of others. The careers of many scientists follow the same pattern -- a conscientious attribution of credit where due, followed by an important personal breakthrough. Darwin is another notable example.
Same applies to scientists. They work individually, and pretty much do work and are judged in isolation.
If you work with a group of people. Politics is a inevitable consequence due to human nature and you will see how that will effect hard working people.
I don't think this is true any more.
Historically, you had individual scientists working hard on very specific problem areas.
Even this didn't get rid of the divide between (perceived) genius and (perceived) success. Witness the classic example of Edison vs. Tesla.
However, modern scientists seem to work predominantly in groups, and are subject to the same petty intrigues and political nonsense as the rest of us.
> I don't think this is true any more.
True, and to me unfortunate. Some recent LHC papers have more than 1000 authors, each of which actually contributed something to the outcome.
"Did Higgs yield the most authors in a science study?" : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57509551-1/did-higgs-yie...
Quote: "Two articles by the teams are each about 30 pages long. The combined author list takes up 19 pages of single-spaced text and appears to have roughly 6,000 names. Wouldn't that be fun to cite as a footnote in full?"
> However, modern scientists seem to work predominantly in groups, and are subject to the same petty intrigues and political nonsense as the rest of us.
All true. The movie portrayal of a 19th century scientist working alone toward a basic discovery is now a popular myth.
Well, Poincaré might want to disagree. Well, it's not like he "stole the work of others", it's about gaining from their successes. And Einstein did that too, as any scientist did: he "stood on the shoulders of giants" (Maxwell, for one).
Yes, certainly true, but not by stealing or failing to attribute prior work. And I agree with your suggestion that Maxwell might be a more important figure in the shaping of modern physics than most people realize.
It's important to remember that what we now understand to be special relativity, with its spacetime interpretation, was crafted by others (primarily Minkowski) after the original paper. This is important to remember when reading the original paper -- we might be suffering from perfect hindsight.
But I might have chosen a bad example, because it's true that Einstein tended not to attribute the work of others as much as he should have. Compare to Newton's "standing on the shoulders of giants" remark.
Self promotion is a skill that we all need, and do not think for a moment that people like Einstein were not well skilled in it.
As for claiming credit in higher proportion to one's contribution, that is evil in proportion to the exaggeration. However, perception being limited as it is, no one, not even the other contributors are in a good position to judge.
As for outright lies, they are, well, outright lies.