>But he’s on the side of science and reason, so he’s our ego-maniac.
Humility and the ability to recognise and accept when we're wrong is one of the fundamental characteristics of science. People with big egos are the enemies of science.
Humility before the truth is vital but not necessarily humility as expressed in one's public statements.
Indeed psychoticism was identified by the psychologist Hans Eysenck as one of the traits of genius, including scientific genius. Psychoticism is a package which includes associative thinking, creativity, disagreeableness, lack of empathy, antisocial nature, introversion, coldness, aggression, high self-esteem.
The problem is that most people are afraid of giving offence, of being ostracised by their colleagues and so on, and so they self-censor their original thoughts and never create anything fundamentally new and important.
So it's unsurprising that most of the great scientists in history had very difficult personalities (Faraday may have been an exception). I think the optimal approach is to study and benefit from the work of geniuses but have as little to do with them personally as possible. Leave them alone to their work.
Of course the fact that someone has a difficult personality does not mean he is a great thinker. However science has a mechanism for dealing with that via the publication system, where ideas that are wrong are eventually criticised and ultimately forgotten.
You're describing generally positive traits, not specific to science. Science was pushed forward by many kinds of people, many of them obnoxious, arrogant, racists, etc. You can't disqualify Wolfram as scientist by pointing to his bad personality characteristics.
Humility and the ability to recognise and accept when we're wrong is one of the fundamental characteristics of science. People with big egos are the enemies of science.