The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries.

" In talking about individual greatness, people naturally refer to what success of the person in point elevated him/her out of the crowd or what marvel of his/her nature lit up the world. We all know about some new comers who make themselves known to the community soon after their arrival and some who are buried in obscurity long before others gain their acquaintance. Alike, all great individuals are not recognized by contemporaries. Art history has seen many great artists who came to fame overnight and others who suffered unfair obscurity in their lifetime. Favored by the Pope, Michelangelo had his name shining for centuries as a genius painter. But Da Vinci was recognized more as a great engineer than a great painter by his contemporaries and it was after his death that the world came to known about his unequaled genius in painting and a host of other disciplines. In music history, Chopin stunned the world at the night when Lister secretly let the former sit in for himself to play for the audience. He was lucky to be able to thrill Vienna and Europe with his talent at an early age, Mendelssohn would have sighed. The whole Europe dreaming in Strauss and Wagner, he had to abide more than his share of the criticism and snub and kept on composing some of his masterpieces that only later became classics and won him an overdue fame. Arts is not the only field where greatness of individuals does not walk hand in hand with their life. Math is a field where recognition of great work often comes overdue.The famous Norwegian mathematician Abel, who proved the insolubility of algebraic equations with orders more than five at the age of 22, was not accepted at all by his fellow mathematicians such as Lagrange, Cauchy and Gauss. Penniless, he died of a disease that was then common among poor people. As to the Franois Galois, one would be lost in lament because Galois thesis that commenced the foundation of modern algebra was rejected twice by the French Institute of Sciences, which destroyed his future as a genius mathematician and drove him to politics, jail, duel and death. Though some mathematicians received world-wide recognizance of their great jobs such as Von Neumann and Jean-Pierre Serre, many masters of math only gained posthumous fame. However, there are also fields where greatness can be seen the moment success is achieved, business not alone. When Bill Gates topped the Forbes list and Microsoft logs dominated PC screens, the whole world enshrined Bill with such enthusiasm that even graders hold him as an idol. Jobs and Dell shared the same experience. In a field like business where success never lasts, greatness of individuals is recognized as quickly as Doe Jones or NASDAQ index changes.