Mike,
That's curious. I was just reading the book, Outliers, which had a section on that. They had this guy Langon, who had scored the highest on an IQ test that had ever been recorded. He got up to $250K and just said, "I'll take the money and run". Smart guy.
Getting back to this astrophysicist that you are talking about...I know one of these guys. He never won a Nobel but has had an article printed in Scientific American. As I got to know him better over many years I was absolutely amazed at how he could quote literary stuff as well as other things that had nothing to do with astrophysics. To top it off, I doubt he even studied that much. Aside from one instance, I never saw him outside the pub. I once asked him, "did you drink this much when you were getting your PhD from Oxford", and he replied, "yeah".
Some people just have sticky, logical minds, I guess.
craig |
