The individual scientific discovery was common in the early history of science, but has grown less common over time. Looking at this list [1], for example:
- Prior to roughly WWII, it was mostly individuals, and so we named things after them (Kelvin, Doppler, Joule, Ohm, etc).
- From WWII until the late 20th century, it was a lot of small teams (transistor, 3; DNA, 4; pulsars, 2; etc).
- Since then, team sizes have grown so that individuals aren't even named (cloning, an Institute; Top Quark, a Lab; Tau neutrino, a Collaboration; etc).
In fact, in the past 35 years, the only individually named contributors on that list were mathematicians who constructed proofs of long-standing unsolved problems in mathematics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discove...