Interesting Stories about PhDs

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 his PhD thesis story in a moment, but let me set the stage. “And be careful if you talk to Ocneanu. Talking to him is like drinking from a fire hose.” This, coming from a man who can’t have a conversation not near a blackboard, because he’ll certainly have to write some equations at some point. I was on guard. A few months later I find myself in Penn State. I see Ocneanu is teaching a class at 3:00 pm. Rumor has it, he can only teach classes in the afternoon, because he always goes at least 30 minutes over. Often more. There simply cannot be another class that needs the room after him. At one lecture, he concluded whatever he was saying and looked at his watch. “Oh! I see that I am 45 minutes late. Okay. No chalk, just the eraser from now on!” He lectured for another hour with just the eraser. It’s one thing to have enthusiasm. But he was also brilliant. Okay okay, so now the story of his PhD thesis. There he was, in 1983, a young undergraduate visiting the University of Warwick for a conference. He struck up a conversation with a professor on a balcony. It lurched into the wee hours. The professor’s hair was smoking by the end of it. In the throes of mathematical rapture, the professor said something like “if you write this all down, I’ll give you a PhD.” It was written down within 24 hours, although reportedly it took a full two weeks to actually get the PhD. Bureaucracy, you know… For the record, yes, Ocneanu has no undergraduate degree. The “education” portion of his CV is just: “PhD.” Like Athena, he was born fully-formed. Vijay Mankar (विजय मानकर) · November 30, 2018 Readers may be interested to know about Stephen Wolfram (Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha). Wikipedia says He was educated at Eton College, but left prematurely in 1976. He entered St. John's College, Oxford at age 17 but found lectures "awful", and left in 1978 without graduating to attend the California Institute of Technology, the following year, where he received a PhD in particle physics on 19 November 1979 at age 20. Wolfram's thesis committee was composed of Richard Feynman, Peter Goldreich, Frank J. Sciulli and Steven Frautschi, and chaired by Richard D. Field.