Not even close.

Even Einstein got his Nobel prize for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect - not this theory of relativity or quantum mechanics.

Example: almost all quantum physic

Any scientific field is advanced by many eminent thinkers making incremental improvements. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" is the wonderful catch-phrase.

Anytime we look at a list of Nobel prize winners - we tend to find a lot of very clever and hardworking people who have lots of time and experience in their field. They had to work very hard to get lucky.

You also tend to find a larger number of equally skilled people who found the same lucky break just a little bit later, or their work went left on step 47 when the current author went right. They both did really great for the first 46 steps!

The limit is twofold: funding and the public desire to continue that funding.