Too often individuals do something noteworthy but then start banging their own drum in attention getting behavior that to my mind detracts from the great good they do.
Yes this is often true. The ones who do the most for us we can't remember their names. There's a guy who makes artificial limbs for ex-service men and women plus civilians who have lost limbs from land mines. He recycles plastic bottles to make the limbs. Amazing guy, saw a documentary about him, but nobody knows his name.
There's another guy who invented a syringe that collapses after one use so that in under developed countries where people used to steal the syringes from medic's sharps bins for drug use they can no longer use them. It is helping prevent the spread of AIDS through sharing syringes. Again I don't remember his name.