Nobody can name the engineers who put the sewers under most European cities, and those sewers have saved more lives than any surgeon in history. The work outlived the credit by a hundred and fifty years.
Building anything better runs on that arrangement.
The people who benefit most from what you do are usually the ones least able to identify you as the cause. Which makes it a poor route to recognition and a very good route to actual effect.
Recognition and effect were never closely coupled. Expecting them to arrive together is what makes most people give up somewhere around year three.