The most successful kid/adult/human is the one who loves others and brings happiness to them, while being loved himself. It doesn't matter if he's a Nobel laureate or a Walmart cashier. Likewise, a person like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robert_Schrieffer who killed someone while driving on a suspended license, is a zero in my book.
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I agree with the core of your message. But the suspended license isn’t the problem here. He fell asleep. Do you think that if his license weren’t suspended that he wouldn’t have fallen asleep?
I'm not sure this is a fair take. In regards to his conviction, his colleagues described Schrieffer as a cautious person.
"This is not the Bob I worked with," said Brown University (search) professor Leon Cooper, who with Schrieffer and John Bardeen was awarded the Nobel in physics in 1972. "This is not the Bob that I knew."
Based on what I've read, it sounds like he had some kind of psychiatric or medical issue at an advanced age that changed his personality, perhaps Alzheimer's. People rarely change personality that much for non-medical reasons.
I don't have enough evidence to make a strong case, but if my hypothesis is valid, it seems unfair to sum up his entire life as a "zero".
Your comment resonated with this quote:
It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People