You are forgetting a important detail here. If BSP was already succesfully used in games by a pioneer, you would be right.
The question is, to recognize an algorithm and apply it, with the proper changes to a novel field, being the first to recognize this, in my experience at least, is not for the average intelligence.
We all have trouble with tagging someone a "genius", because its not clear what this is, or if we are using this too much and in a wrong way (and i think we do)
But i also need to remind you about the early nineties, and how hard was to get into information, papers and research, compared to now. Also the limitation of the computers back then forcing people like Carmack to use very clever algorithms to thrive. We always need to take the context people were in to properly estimate this kind of things.
By the way, he did not just solved that, but a lot of other hard problems with different, successful outcomes.. So its not just because of the BSP he have this level of recognition.
We all have trouble with tagging someone a "genius", because its not clear what this is, or if we are using this too much and in a wrong way (and i think we do)
But i also need to remind you about the early nineties, and how hard was to get into information, papers and research, compared to now. Also the limitation of the computers back then forcing people like Carmack to use very clever algorithms to thrive. We always need to take the context people were in to properly estimate this kind of things.
By the way, he did not just solved that, but a lot of other hard problems with different, successful outcomes.. So its not just because of the BSP he have this level of recognition.