The Libertarian Atheist

For activities that are guaranteed or very likely to pay off, taking a loan is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Indeed, this is generally how doctors and lawyers get the money for their advanced degrees and how many people get their college degrees.

For scientific research, I think the present system where most research is done at universities works fine. Top universities seem not to have too much trouble getting adequate funding from voluntary alumni contributions, and can afford to employ most of the scientists in the world. The very bright person in this case should get a job at a university.

I would point out that scientific advances aren't dependent on particular bright people. Einstein's work on special relativity was really only a thin veneer of added theory on top of the substantial advances made by others in the decade or two prior – the work of Lorentz and Fitzgerald was more important, and they discovered the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction independently, indicating that this science was simply ready to be discovered by the first person that looked at it. Einstein's work on general relativity was more important, but it was likewise something that would have been done by someone else had he not done it.

Finally, if someone really thinks that science can't advance without him, he's free to take a part time job to support himself and spend the rest of his time on research. In effect, this is what Einstein did at the Swiss patent office.