Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of the black and white picture of all the scientist of 19th century together. Each individual in that photo had contributed something to human knowledge. It feels like in 19th century we believed in our scientists and advancing our knowledge. I feel today celebrities are given more importance than our scientists. The best minds of our century are focused on extracting value from rest of the population.

You probably mean the Solvay conference. I just wanted to append this link to your comment: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/So...

It really is a remarkable picture, but I'd like to note that it's all physicists, not scientists in general. It was the golden era of physics.

Perhaps you are thinking of the 1927 Solvay Conference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solvay_conference_1927.jp...

The era of scientists being celebrities is done for the simple reason that it's not possible for a single human to advance our knowledge. Breakthrough papers are published by large groups who build on knowledge created by even larger groups.

Also, science used to directly correlate with improvements in life standards. Nowadays we see advancements in science (AI, psychology) used to actively reduce the standard of life.