This was the most interesting line in the essay to me as well — I flashed back to quitting an academic math career instantly; the way I thought about it at 19 or 20 was that I didn’t think I could be world class at it. (Rightly). The next thought I had was “what am I good at?” And implied in that was at the very least “What could I be world class at?” Or at least very good at.

I don’t think I ever thought I was good enough to try and get (math) immortality by finding and naming some result that would live beyond me, but if I had, perhaps this bad news would have had a similar impact on me.

That said, I think I disagree with the premise at the margin, at least. I don’t care how many proof assistants or cluster compute is used - the team or person that proves the Riemann Hypothesis will be famous, or at least math famous.