A shocking number of innovations in x field are because y person brought an idea that maps from z field. Cross functional teams are important and mathematicians can and absolutely do make top level contributions to physics.

One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.

Oh that is true, and I’m not putting down cross functional teams. I’m just putting down the idea that a specialist in one area can immediately be a specialist in another semi related area with no extra review time.