Wizards knowing obscure languages or history of long dead ages. Rogues who know the underworld of a city better than the back of their hands. Scions of noble houses who have family connections and feuds all through the land. Bards or priests who know the stories of the people and can pick out the parallels that make those stories so inspiring. There are lots of fantasy character types who are experts is some field of knowledge.
But, D&D has a problem with expert characters. As generally played, the DM "owns" the world and the story. The player doesn't and can't have as much knowledge of the world -- the people, the history, the institutions, the stories, etc. -- as the expert character should. The DM probably doesn't even have that knowledge, but will make it up when he thinks it is relevant. So the supposedly expert character doesn't make the connections and deductions that he should. At best, sometimes the player thinks there may be something and asks the DM. The character's expertise becomes just another way to pry clues from the DM, rather than a part of the character.
Of course, a player could make things up. Have the expert character occasionally proactively use his expertise to work out connections, make observations, etc. If the player knows enough about the world -- again NPCs, history, institutions, meta-physics, etc. whatever the relevant field of knowledge is -- she might feel comfortable doing so. If the DM is willing to back it up and run with the suggestions, it can work. Most likely though, the player's "expert" idea doesn't match the DM's plans, so in the end the character ends up being wrong a lot. By trying to show that the character is an expert, he is instead shown to be mostly wrong. (And, while it might be true that part of being an expert is being wrong a lot and detecting that you are wrong quickly, that's not does not seem to be a good way to get the other players at your table to buy into your character being an expert.)
All that said, in D&D as written, it doesn't matter. The characters start at 1st level and by definition aren't experts. After playing the character for a while and earning a few levels, the player will (perhaps) have learned some of the background necessary for that character's expertise. Especially if played over years with the same group a shared world rich enough to support expertise could build up. See the D&D Blackmore campaign or Glorantha or Tekumel as examples. I don't think most of us play it that way anymore (and I think maybe most people never did).
So, what to do about it.
1. Accept it. Heros aren't academics, they are beings of action. They occasionally get clues from fragments of obscure lore, but they aren't concerned with piecing together understanding and making deductions from it. Get the info dump from the DM as appropriate.
2. Embrace the out-of-touch expert trope. If the DM supports it, have the character spout theories and ideas based on their knowledge. Accept that they will mostly be wrong -- perhaps the character is too obsessed, or so theoretical as to miss the obvious. At the same time, the DM can glean some ideas from the suggestions and occasionally use them to make the expertise pay off.
3. Give players creative power through a mechanic for character expertise. If the character is expert is swinging a sword, they have mechanics that enforce that. They player says they are causing some mayhem, rolls, and the mayhem happens. So why not do the same for knowledge-based expertise? They player has the character spot lore, rolls and it may be true. (You may need to delay the rolls until some character acts on the information to avoid running into problems with players knowing when the info is wrong because they saw a bad roll. )
I like the 3rd option. That said, it can't work if the DM is still thinking that he needs to set up the whole adventure ahead of time.
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