Story 1: By Jonas Oberhauser Who wrote their PhD thesis in the shortest amount of time? Wolfgang J. Paul, in Computer Science. Professor Hotz jokingly said “Anyone who solves this problem deserves a PhD.”, believing the problem to be impossible to solve. This must have triggered Paul’s ego so much that half a year later, he came to Hotz and said “I have proven a lemma about that problem” (i.e., solved a small subproblem). Hotz went through the lemma with him and said “yeah, that’s correct.” Paul asked “So you said I can get a PhD if I solve the full problem?” and Hotz said “Yes, sure.” And then Paul slammed a 37 page document on Hotz’ desk, saying “Well, I want my PhD.” He’s now a senior professor in Computer Science. His online CV Story 2: By Charles S., Former mathematician, current patent lawyer Answered Mar 20, 2019 · Upvoted by Stephen Kurtzman Nobody has yet mentioned the natural phenomenon called Adrian Ocneanu, of the Penn State University math department. I’ll get to