I may have not stated it well, i did not mean an idea to the exclusion of others but rather that they but that they didn't stop working on every single idea they took upon for a long long time. From the list you give, there arent any scientists who put their research on a subject "to bed" , unless it proved a failure.
Umm, Newton? The latter part of his life was research in alchemy and biblical chronology.
If you say that Newton "worked on a single idea [his] entire life", then what was the idea?
In any case, the observation is incomplete. All great scientists slept at least once a month doesn't mean that sleeping at least once a month is a distinctive attribute of great scientists.
If most great scientists work on a given topic all of their scientific career, is that not mostly because most scientists do the same?
