Einstein was completely unknown and did not even have a doctorate when he published his 1905 papers on special relativity, brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect.

And it was many years before his theories were generally accepted, especially by some of the older physicists.

It's difficult to overcome scientific dogma at any time. To get his doctorate, Einstein had to write an unimportant, very forgettable paper which didn't challenge any of his professors' preconceptions.

I second this nomination.

"Asimov on Numbers" is a good place to start. It's a collection of his best essays on mathematics.

Most of the masses were already complaining about the ending being too long. Personally, I was amazed that we got as much denoument as we did. Most fantasy novels these days just go "poof" in the last 5 pages, and everyone is happy again, so it's not just movies that suffer from the public's attention deficit disorder.

So I think we got as much LoTR as non-fanatical fans could stand, although I would have liked to see Robin Williams as Tom Bombadil.